RAGUSA, rii-grcilzit (Slay. Dubrovnik). A historic town and fortified seaport in the Crown Mild of Dalmatia. Austria, situated at the foot of San Sergio, 50 miles south-southeast of Nos tar (Map: Austria, F 5). It is a walled city v. ith many towers and intersected by the Corso, once an arm of the sea, and now containing the most interesting features of the town, including the Palazzo Rettorale (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the former residence of the rectors of the Republic. the old mint, the custom house, and the cathedral completed in 1713. Among other buildings may be mentioned the Palazzo Collin:um:1e, the mnseum, and the theatre. The harbor is small and unprotected and most of the heavier vessels anchor at Gravosa, about four miles from the town. The chief products are oil. silk, leather, and liqueurs. There is some transit trade with Herzegovina. Population, in 1900, 13.174.
Ragusa is believed to have been founded about the middle of the seventh century, by refugees from Ragusa Vecchia or Old Ragusa (the ancient Epidaurus), probably destroyed by the Slays.
Although successively subject to Constantinople. Venice, Hungary, Servia, and Bosnia, Ragusa enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy and repeatedly fought against every encroachment on its independence. At the close of the Middle Ages it became tributary to Turkey, and under Turkish overlordship rose to the position of one of the principal centres of commerce in Southern Europe. Its territory embraced over 500 square miles. Its institutions were aristocratic. The plagues during the sixteenth century, and the frequent earthquakes, especially that of 1667, when the town lost one-fifth of its inhabitants, put an end to the prosperity of the little Repub lic. Seized by Napoleon in 1806. it was deprived of its independence in 1308 and awarded to Aus tria by the Congress of Vienna in 1814. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century Ragusa was a great seat of South Slavic literature. The most famous of the Ragusan poets was Gun dulid (q.v.), who died in 1638. Consult Jackson, Dalmatia, vol. ii. (Oxford, 1887).