Orlando’s Column

For over six centuries, Orlando has stood watch over Luža Square. Carved from a single block of stone in 1417 by a Milanese architect, this seemingly modest column carries powerful meaning. The figure is Roland—known here as Orlando—depicted as a knight with sword in hand and shield on arm. A military commander under Charlemagne, Roland died in 778, an event immortalised in the epic poem The Song of Roland. From that moment on, he became a legendary figure throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, even inspiring Shakespeare’s Orlando in As You Like It. Across Central and Northern Europe, he came to symbolise the fight for freedom against tyranny and injustice, and in the German-speaking world, he became an emblem of civic rights: so much so that “Roland statues” sprang up in many towns during the 14th and 15th centuries. But here in Dubrovnik, far from the Baltic, this is the only Roland statue anywhere in the Mediterranean. Local legend claims that a knight named Roland once defended the city from a Saracen siege in the 9th century. Of course, the dates don’t match the real Roland’s lifetime: this was a medieval habit, weaving a famous hero into local history to lend prestige and pride. Myth or not, Orlando became a powerful symbol for the Republic of Ragusa, which had to defend its independence against invading forces in earlier centuries and, more recently, during the Croatian War of Independence and the Siege of Dubrovnik in the 1990s. Originally, the column served as a platform for public proclamations, but it soon took on another role: flying the city’s flag. Weathered and damaged more than once over the centuries, it still stands as a reminder that civic rights are precious, fragile, and worth defending.