Dubrovnik and Korčula
Pebble and rock around the city, sand over at Lumbarda
The Old Town and the Stradun, Banje and the Sveti Jakov cove, Lapad Bay and Copacabana, Gruž and Lokrum, then Korčula Town, the bays towards Račišće and the Lumbarda beaches.
Down here the first thing that matters is what the item landed on. The Dubrovnik tourist board lists its city beaches as pebble, rock, gravel and concrete, so a beach afternoon in this city is often spent on a stone terrace or a set of steps rather than on open sand.
Ring Seekers is a lost ring and jewellery recovery service that connects people who lost a ring, wedding band, watch or phone in Dubrovnik and Korčula with a metal detectorist who can search there. Two towns share this page: Dubrovnik, with the Old City, Ploče, Pile, Lapad, Gruž and Lokrum, and Korčula Town, with the bays west of it and the sand at Lumbarda.
Tell us what happened and where. We find a detectorist who can reach the place, brief them with your map and photos, and tell you honestly if the odds are poor.
Start with the order of the day, not the moment
What we ask for first is the order of the day rather than a single spot: where you swam, where you ate, which way you walked back. People are often wrong about the exact moment and right about the route, and a route is something a detectorist can be sent along.
Two things make that usable: a pin dropped where you think it happened, and a photograph of the watch, band or bracelet itself. Name the surface too, pebble, paving, concrete or sand, and how deep you were standing if you had been in the sea.
Places we cover in Dubrovnik and Korčula
- Dubrovnik Old Town, Placa and the Stradun
- The Pile and Ploče gates
- The City Harbour
- The Porporela pier
- Gornja Buža and Donja Buža
- Banje beach on the Ploče side
- Sveti Jakov, Belvedere and Đivović
- Šulić and Danče at Pile
- Lapad Bay and Šetalište Pucića
- Copacabana and Solitudo on Lapad
- Cava, Coral Beach and Bellevue
- Gruž port and the Gruž market
- Lokrum, Portoč and the Dead Sea lake
- Korčula Town and the Land Gate
- The fishbone lanes and the Loggia
- The Sveti Antun steps
- Banje, Zakerjan, Puntin and St Nikola in Korčula Town
- Žrnovska Banja and Medvinjak
- Kočje above Žrnovo
- Kneže, Vrbovica and Račišće
- Vaja and Samograd
- Lumbarda, Pržina, Bilin žal and Tatinja
- Badija and Vrnik in the Korčula archipelago
- Mljet, Polače, Pomena and the two lakes
The city, its coves, the island town and the bays around it
Pebble and rock in the city, stone lanes in both old towns, sand at Lumbarda.
Placa, the harbour and Porporela
Placa, which everybody calls the Stradun, is the main street and runs 298 metres. The City Harbour beside it and the Porporela pier beyond are both promenade now, and Old City residents swim off Porporela.
Banje, Sveti Jakov and the Ploče side
Banje is on the Ploče side, with the walls in view across the water, and it is pebble. Along the same stretch are the rock and concrete at Komarda, the stone and concrete in front of the Ploče hotels, and Betina špilja, which the tourist board marks as reachable from the sea only. Sveti Jakov is the quieter pebble cove, with Belvedere and Đivović nearby on rock, and the two Buža bathing places in the Old City are rock as well.
Lapad, Copacabana, Gruž and Lokrum
Lapad is the suburb west of the Old City, with a promenade, a great many of the city hotels and the Lapad Bay beach, which is pebble and one of the most popular in Dubrovnik. Copacabana and Solitudo are both listed as gravel, Cava and Coral Beach as concrete, rock and pebble together. Gruž, the port district, is where the ferries, buses and cruise ships meet and where the daily market is. Lokrum has no sand: people swim off its rocks, or float in the small salt lake on its southern side known as the Dead Sea.
Korčula Town and its beaches
Korčula Town stands on a small peninsula on the eastern coast of the island, where the channel between island and mainland narrows to 1,270 metres. The old town keeps its fishbone plan and is entered from the land side through the Land Gate, and the tourist board lists Banje, Zakerjan, Puntin and St Nikola among the town beaches.
Lumbarda, Žrnovska Banja and the bays west
Lumbarda is where the sand is. Pržina takes its name from the local word for sand, a shallow south facing bay sheltered from the northern winds with pine shade on its rocky part. Bilin žal faces the other way towards Pelješac, backed by a stone wall, and Tatinja looks north to Vrnik and Gubavac with the Parapet pier beside it. West of the town instead lie Žrnovska Banja about three kilometres out, then Vrbovica, Kneže and Račišće about twelve kilometres along, with the coves of Vaja and Samograd reached on foot. Inland, a path from the hamlet of Brdo above Žrnovo leads to Kočje, a narrow hollow of mossy dolomite rock with springs.
From your message to somebody standing on that spot
One thread, from first message to last
WhatsApp is the whole of it. Send a voice note if typing is easier, add to it when something else comes back to you, and it all stays in the same place.
A mainland city and an island town
Whoever covers the Lapad promenade is rarely whoever covers Lumbarda. Your first message tells us which of the two we need, and we go looking from there.
You get told what we really think
Some of what arrives from this coast is worth going out for and some is not. Which yours looks like is in the answer you get back.
Pebble, rock, concrete, sand
A search on the Banje pebble looks nothing like one on the rock at the Buža bathing places, the Lapad concrete or the open sand at Pržina.
You see the costs first
What a search here comes to is explained to you before anybody is asked to go anywhere, and it stops there until you say otherwise.
What you were standing on, and what was behind you
Mostly stone around the city, with real sand over on the island.
Four surfaces, and they matter more than the town name
The Dubrovnik beach list runs to pebble at Banje, Sveti Jakov and Lapad Bay, gravel at Copacabana and Solitudo, rock at Danče, Boninovo and the two Buža bathing places, and concrete in front of several hotels. On Korčula the sand is at Lumbarda. One word of that in your first message does more than a paragraph of anything else.
The stone you got in from has not moved
The Porporela paving, the Parapet pier beside Tatinja, the stone and concrete fronting the hotels: a great deal of the swimming in both towns happens off built ground. Photograph whichever one was yours and count outwards from it.
An afternoon here covers more than a beach
The Stradun and the lanes off it, the Lapad promenade, the Gruž market, the Sveti Antun steps in Korčula. Put down everywhere you went, in order, and leave us to decide which parts are worth walking.
Questions about Dubrovnik and Korčula
Is Porporela a hopeless place to lose a watch?
No, it is one of the easier spots to describe. Porporela is the pier with the beacon at the foot of St John's Fortress, and Old City residents swim from it. Say whether you were on the paving, on the edge or in the water, and how far towards the beacon you had gone.
We know it was Banje and nothing more precise than that.
Then start with what was behind you. Banje is on the Ploče side, close enough to look back at the city walls, and it is pebble rather than sand. Count along the beach from whatever that was, and say whether you had been swimming.
We swam at both Sveti Jakov and Lapad Bay that day. Which do we give you?
Both, with the times. Sveti Jakov is the quiet pebble cove, with the rocky bathing places at Belvedere and Đivović along the same stretch, while Lapad Bay is pebble with the promenade and hotels behind it. That is two searches, so put them in order.
Can a chain dropped on the Stradun still be picked up?
It can. Placa, the street everyone calls the Stradun, is 298 metres end to end, short enough to walk back along properly, and the houses on it have shops at street level. Give us the shop fronts you stopped at and the lanes you turned into.
An Oura ring has gone in the Korčula lanes. Do you take something that small?
We do, and small things want reporting quickly. The old town runs on a fishbone plan, a main street east to west with side streets branching towards the sea, so the lanes are short and each has an end you can name. Work back from the Land Gate and give us the turnings.
Lumbarda has more than one sandy beach. Which one were we on?
They face different ways, which usually settles it. Pržina, whose name is the Lumbarda word for sand, is a shallow south facing bay with pine shade on its rocky part. Bilin žal faces north east towards Pelješac with a stone wall behind it, and Tatinja faces Vrnik and Gubavac, with the Parapet pier beside it.
We were on a boat to Lokrum or Mljet, or out to Badija. Where does that leave us?
Better than it sounds, as long as some of the day was on land. Lokrum is about ten minutes by boat from the Old City harbour, Badija and Vrnik lie just off Korčula Town, and the Mljet boats berth mostly at Polače and Pomena, with footpaths from both to Malo and Veliko jezero, two deep bays of seawater where people swim. Open water itself is a long shot, and you would hear that from us first.
Our ship leaves from Gruž in a couple of hours.
Send what you already have, now rather than later. Gruž is where the ferries, the buses and the cruise ships come together, and the Elaphite boats leave from there, so say which you had been on and where you were beforehand. A pin, a photograph and the order of the morning are enough.
Dubrovnik and Korčula
Tell us where the day actually took you
Where the day started, where it ended, everywhere in between, and a photograph of the watch, band or bracelet.
WhatsApp is where that should land. We will push back on anything still vague, give you our honest read of it, and set out what a search at that spot would mean before you decide anything.