Vastly outnumbered by tourists, the few remaining residents of Dubrovnik’s iconic Old Town rue the loss of its identity, charm and way of life.

Viewed from the 15th-century Large Onofrio Fountain at one end of Stradun, the limestone main street in Dubrovnik’s Old Town, one might be forgiven for mistaking what Lord Byron called the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’ for a scene from Tetris, the popular 1980s video game. Tourists pour in endless droves through the town gate. They move in different formations and directions. At times, there are so many of them they fill the entire space, as if pieces of a jigsaw puzzle completely obscuring the smooth, intricate stonework beneath their feet.

The town centre, which covers an area of roughly 18 hectares, can hold, and regularly does hold, 10,000 tourists at any one time. The narrow streets become clogged; lines of people barely move; they accidentally photobomb each other’s selfies. And in the midst of this chaos, a few stern individuals can be seeing rushing through the crowds, solemn and hurried as they try to run their daily errands. These are the locals, an endangered species. If, by any chance, the Old Town clears for a moment, the scene is breathtaking – a perfectly proportioned, medieval stone town, encircled by monumental walls topped with turrets and forts that have guarded its freedom for centuries. Its southern flank is lapped by the Adriatic, its north watched over by a hill named Srdj.

Lord Byron wasn’t exaggerating. Nor are the thousands of tourists who post pictures of Dubrovnik on social media with the hashtags #amazing, #beautiful #mustsee. The harmony between the corporeal and the spiritual has long preserved Dubrovnik. Since the 7th century, the town grew according to well-designed plans, in compliance with its scale and capacity. This is precisely the reason why this perfectly preserved former city-state is utterly, charmingly unique. It is why UNESCO placed it on the World Heritage List in 1979. It is why the producers of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ decided it would be a perfect backdrop for King’s Landing, capital of the Seven Kingdoms. And now Dubrovnik is on many a traveller’s bucket list. See it before you die. But the town’s popularity has become its curse. It is now, after Venice, the second most popular cruise-ship destination on the Mediterranean.

Last year, a staggering 1.2 million tourists visited Dubrovnik, 17 per cent up on 2016. This year looks set to break records again. And as tourist numbers rise, the Old Town’s real population falls. Out of 42,615 residents of wider Dubrovnik, only 1,557 are registered as living in the Old Town, 25 per cent fewer than in 2011. A third of them are older than 65. Some 22 per cent are considering moving, according to a recent survey by the Institute for the Restoration of Dubrovnik. “In town, we would go to sleep and wake up to all the noise. We spent months with our windows shut,” said Sandra Ivicevic-Bakulic, whose family moved out last year of the Old Town to the nearby settlement of Zlatni Potok to escape the tourists.Three generations of her family were born within the town’s walls. Of some 30 families on their street, only a handful are left. “The stress was too much to handle,” she said. “The town had lost everything we used to love about it.”

We need to stop counting people

Tourism is a central pillar of the Croatian economy, generating 9.5 billion euros in income last year and accounting for almost one fifth of the country’s economic output. Such figures, Tourism Minister Gari Capelli said in March, are “the best indicator of how far Croatian tourism has come.” But at what cost?

A five-minute walk from Stradun, in the small, harmonious apartment of Ana Zuvela and her husband Davor Busnja, lunch simmers on the stove. There are a hostel and a few rental apartments nearby. Tourists stroll past the windows. “I could install a glass panel in the kitchen which opens up when you insert a penny so the tourists can watch us cook while the kids do their homework. We could have the more demanding ones round for dinner, so they can experience the local way of life,” Ana joked.

A longing to preserve the way of life she knew as a child brought Ana back to the Old Town after she completed a postgraduate degree in Dublin. Her decision means her children are growing up in a pedestrian zone, neighbours offer them cakes while they play outside and in turn they help the elderly carry their groceries. Friends pop in uninvited for coffee after lunch; the neighbourhood chips in for the funeral of someone less fortunate. “I find it very important that we think of one another, that we’re not just another cog in this world of individualism,” said Ana, who works for the state Institute for Development and International Relations. “We want to live here and it costs us dearly – noise, crowds, disorder, living in a small flat because the price of real-estate has gone through the roof… Everything is more expensive if you live in the very centre. But unlike Dubrovnik itself, we’ve settled for a limited place to expand.”

But surely they reap the benefits of Dubrovnik the money-maker? Not so. “We take toilet paper to our child’s kindergarten, plastic cups to our child’s school because they don’t have the means to buy such items,” said Davor. “There’s a big discrepancy between the town’s ample budget and the quality of life of its inhabitants. I honestly can’t see where the money from tourism goes.” Ana added: “There is nothing organised for children or the elderly. There aren’t enough physicians. Public venues in the centre generate a lot of income and that money used to be re-invested into the same venues; they were renovated, paved. Today, the town is exploited but not renewed. Dubrovnik was, historically, a smart town, that’s why it was built as it was. Not anymore. Today it’s pretty, but dumb.”

Davor, an architect originally from the Croatian capital Zagreb, said he used to get goose bumps every time he walked down Stradun.“The place has such grandiosity, balance and beauty. I see this effect on foreigners who visit it during the winter, when Dubrovnik can be admired in peace,” he said. Ana agreed: “Everyone deserves a chance to be awestruck by Dubrovnik.”

Frankovic, the mayor, conceded that not enough had been invested in the town’s infrastructure in recent years. Since his election, he said, repair work had been carried out on the water and sewer system as well as some roads. The local authorities plan three new kindergartens, a new school and 40 apartments to be built under an affordable-housing plan to encourage young families to stay. A retirement home is also envisaged. Up until a few years ago, there was talk of extending the tourist season in Dubrovnik. Now, tourist numbers drop off only between November and March, a brief window for the town and its inhabitants to recover and ready themselves for the next round. Even in off-season, the Old Town becomes a movie set.

Not just an ATM

Tourism has devoured Dubrovnik, said Nikolina Farcic, president of the Guild of Caterers and Tourist Workers. “The whole town placed all its hopes in tourism and there is a shortage of workers. There isn’t enough accommodation for them or for the younger population of the town. Everything is for rent and the rates are astronomical,” said Farcic. “Standards used to be high because hotels hired educated and qualified staff. Nowadays, there’s too much of everything and everyone is working in tourism, even those who saw tourism as a sort of plan B.”

She sits in the Mariners’ Club, one of only a handful of still reasonably-priced places visited mainly by locals, alongside Srdjan Kera, a former mariner and president of a non-governmental organisation called Nazbilj. Kera was behind a satirical ‘funeral’ for Dubrovnik staged a decade ago. Even then, the locals were moving out and bookshops, butchers and grocery stores were becoming restaurants, cafes and candy stores. “Back then, it was felt we had too many souvenir shops. There were about fifty of them. Today, there are more than twice as many. It’s total chaos,” he said. “The town has been killed.” He pointed to a nearby cafe: “They get issued a permit for five tables and they put out nine.”

Farcic agreed. “We don’t manage tourism, it manages us.” Outside the walls, the sea is strewn with kayaks and jet-skis; a sailboat packed with people glides by and a huge yacht bears down on swimmers; a cruise ship approaches, ready to disgorge.

Sandra Ivicevic-Bakulic now sits above the commotion, gazing down on the Old Town where she used to live and the lush island of Lokrum from her terrace in Zlatni Potok, a settlement built in the 1970s for workers of the Babin Kuk hotel complex. Finally, there is peace. But Sandra and her husband, Ivan, lament that their children will never know Dubrovnik as they had. “Our children do not see this town as their own, as it was for us when we were children,” said Ivan. “We used to go out on Stradun, while they go to the old bus terminal because the centre is too expensive. A few days ago, our girls couldn’t go for a midnight swim because the beaches are locked overnight,” he said. Dubrovnik “belongs to the concessionaires, because everything is rented out”. “This is what it has come to – take the money and run. This town is not just an ATM machine, it’s someone’s home.”

First published on 18 July 2018 on Balkaninsight.com.

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This article was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, supported by the ERSTE Foundation and Open Society Foundations, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.