The ‘Pearl of the Adri­at­ic‘, sit­u­at­ed on the Dal­ma­t­ian coast, became an impor­tant Mediter­ranean sea pow­er from the 13th cen­tu­ry onwards. Although severe­ly dam­aged by an earth­quake in 1667, Dubrovnik man­aged to pre­serve its beau­ti­ful Goth­ic, Renais­sance and Baroque church­es, monas­ter­ies, palaces and foun­tains. Dam­aged again in the 1990s by armed con­flict, it is now the focus of a major restora­tion pro­gramme co-ordi­­nat­ed by UNESCO.