Life after war
Dubrovnik, Croatia -- Limping noticeably, Kate Bagoje leads me across the bustling market square outside her office.
There's something she wants to show me on the baroque facade of St. Blaise's Church, named for Dubrovnik's patron saint....
...."There," she says, pointing to a pockmark. "And there. And there. And there, and there and there."
They're divots from bullets fired by Serbian soldiers from the hillside above Dubrovnik while they laid siege to the walled medieval city.
But the fact that Bagoje had to point them out was a testament to the remarkable job she and her team of international restoration experts have done to repair the damage from the thousands of mortar shells, rockets and machine-gun bullets that rained down on the UNESCO World Heritage site for five months in 1991 and 1992.
Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Accord, which formally ended the brutal and often sadistic spasm of violence resulting from the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
Evidence of the war -- abandoned, roofless homes, weed-covered debris piles -- remains visible throughout the Balkans like an open wound, but Dubrovnik's medieval Old Town stands whole and, to the casual eye, almost untouched.
It's only when you walk the city ramparts and look down on the red tile roofs that you begin to comprehend the scale of the damage.
More than 500 buildings -- 70 percent of the total -- sport bright new roofs.
Back on ground level, if you look carefully, you can see pieces of new stonework that haven't yet weathered to match the old.
Here and there, you encounter a statue missing an arm or a constellation of bullet marks on the side of a church, but overall Dubrovnik is in very good shape, all things considered.
Estimates of the damage range from $50 million to $600 million, depending on whether you count the newer part of town outside the walls.
The money has come from Croatia; UNESCO, the United Nations organization charged with protecting World Heritage sites; and nations all over the world, including private organizations in the United States.
As you ride the shuttle bus in from the airport, 12 miles down the coast, you pass through the scene of some of the most vicious fighting.
But today, new hotels and vacation villas are sprouting up everywhere as the Dalmatian Coast regains its prewar status as Europe's latest seaside glamour spot.
As the bus rounds a final bend, you're met with the gasp-inducing view of the old city that has left generations of writers scrambling for superlatives.
All George Bernard Shaw managed to come up with was the rather lame "heaven on earth." But David DeVoss nailed it nicely, describing it as "rising from the rocky coast like an Adriatic Camelot."
On my visit last year, I checked into my hotel -- which, like most in Dubrovnik, lies outside the city walls -- and hurried off to meet Bagoje, who led the restoration effort.
As I passed through the Pile Gate, I paused between the inner and outer walls to read a big plaque.
"Damages caused by the aggression on Dubrovnik by the Yugoslav army, Serbs and Montenegrins, 1991-1992," it says in five languages above a detailed map of the Old Town. Dots, triangles and red squares indicate various forms of damage, and well over two-thirds of the buildings are marked.
"There was no military purpose at all for what they did," Bagoje said as she welcomed me into her office in a 15th century palace. "They wanted to destroy our culture, our heritage and our history."
Her home outside the city walls took two direct hits, one while she was in it. Fourteen years later, she still walks with a limp from her injuries.
Bagoje, her colleagues and representatives from UNESCO began work on the restoration early in 1992, not long after the bombardment began.
Three times during lulls in the shelling, she went up on the city walls to photograph the damage. "I could have been shot," she said. "I was so stupid then."
Under cover of darkness, she eluded the Serbian naval blockade to sail out of the harbor in a small boat and investigate quarries on tiny islands near Korcula.
The only way to match the stone perfectly, Bagoje explained, is to get it from the original quarry.
Those sites had been abandoned, but she had better luck on the island of Brac, which supplied some of the high-quality limestone for Dubrovnik and, as all Croatians know, for the White House in Washington.
They're divots from bullets fired by Serbian soldiers from the hillside above Dubrovnik while they laid siege to the walled medieval city.
But the fact that Bagoje had to point them out was a testament to the remarkable job she and her team of international restoration experts have done to repair the damage from the thousands of mortar shells, rockets and machine-gun bullets that rained down on the UNESCO World Heritage site for five months in 1991 and 1992.
Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the Dayton Accord, which formally ended the brutal and often sadistic spasm of violence resulting from the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
Evidence of the war -- abandoned, roofless homes, weed-covered debris piles -- remains visible throughout the Balkans like an open wound, but Dubrovnik's medieval Old Town stands whole and, to the casual eye, almost untouched.
It's only when you walk the city ramparts and look down on the red tile roofs that you begin to comprehend the scale of the damage.
More than 500 buildings -- 70 percent of the total -- sport bright new roofs.
Back on ground level, if you look carefully, you can see pieces of new stonework that haven't yet weathered to match the old.
Here and there, you encounter a statue missing an arm or a constellation of bullet marks on the side of a church, but overall Dubrovnik is in very good shape, all things considered.
Estimates of the damage range from $50 million to $600 million, depending on whether you count the newer part of town outside the walls.
The money has come from Croatia; UNESCO, the United Nations organization charged with protecting World Heritage sites; and nations all over the world, including private organizations in the United States.
As you ride the shuttle bus in from the airport, 12 miles down the coast, you pass through the scene of some of the most vicious fighting.
But today, new hotels and vacation villas are sprouting up everywhere as the Dalmatian Coast regains its prewar status as Europe's latest seaside glamour spot.
As the bus rounds a final bend, you're met with the gasp-inducing view of the old city that has left generations of writers scrambling for superlatives.
All George Bernard Shaw managed to come up with was the rather lame "heaven on earth." But David DeVoss nailed it nicely, describing it as "rising from the rocky coast like an Adriatic Camelot."
On my visit last year, I checked into my hotel -- which, like most in Dubrovnik, lies outside the city walls -- and hurried off to meet Bagoje, who led the restoration effort.
As I passed through the Pile Gate, I paused between the inner and outer walls to read a big plaque.
"Damages caused by the aggression on Dubrovnik by the Yugoslav army, Serbs and Montenegrins, 1991-1992," it says in five languages above a detailed map of the Old Town. Dots, triangles and red squares indicate various forms of damage, and well over two-thirds of the buildings are marked.
"There was no military purpose at all for what they did," Bagoje said as she welcomed me into her office in a 15th century palace. "They wanted to destroy our culture, our heritage and our history."
Her home outside the city walls took two direct hits, one while she was in it. Fourteen years later, she still walks with a limp from her injuries.
Bagoje, her colleagues and representatives from UNESCO began work on the restoration early in 1992, not long after the bombardment began.
Three times during lulls in the shelling, she went up on the city walls to photograph the damage. "I could have been shot," she said. "I was so stupid then."
Under cover of darkness, she eluded the Serbian naval blockade to sail out of the harbor in a small boat and investigate quarries on tiny islands near Korcula.
The only way to match the stone perfectly, Bagoje explained, is to get it from the original quarry.
Those sites had been abandoned, but she had better luck on the island of Brac, which supplied some of the high-quality limestone for Dubrovnik and, as all Croatians know, for the White House in Washington.