Pigeons and Rooftops

There is a saying that the more pigeons a city has, the wealthier its inhabitants, but in the case of Dubrovnik, it is more a direct correlation between the number of tourists who feed them rather than the wealth of their citizens. In fact, 70% of the population in Dubrovnik is dependent on tourism for work. As the third busiest cruise ship port in the Mediterranean, Dubrovnik certainly gets its share of visitors. We were there on a slow day with just two ships in port.

Today's photos were taken from the city walls near the Pile Gate. See the pigeons flying over the dome? But what is interesting to me about these photos is the difference between the rooftops. Most of the tourism pictures you will see are of these distinctive red rooftops. Our guide explained to us that the exterior of the houses in the old city was the same, specifically designed for equality on the outside where one cannot distinguish the wealth or lack of from the exterior of the apartments. You can see that in the bottom picture which is mostly residences in the upper levels above the shops of the main street. But the difference among the rooftops is because many were destroyed during the war in the early 1990s and the replacements, while blending with the older surviving roofs, were just different.