Beyond the harbour of Ragusa the road leads below the Dominican convent to the outer Ploče gate, passing two chapels--SS. Annunziata, with a group of S. John the Baptist and two other saints in the tympanum of the Gothic doorway, and S. Luke, with Renaissance decoration and tympanum. Turning sharply beneath two gates, above the outer of which S. Blaise stands in his usual place, the road passes over a stone bridge which replaces the original drawbridge, and through the outer gates to the lazaretto and Turkish bazaar. Here there is a late Renaissance fountain, at which country people, most of whom are Herzegovinians, may be seen watering their mules, for the road to Trebinje comes down to this gate. There is little else to see in the bazaar, the importance of which has much declined; but from this side of the town charming views of Ragusa may be obtained, with a foreground of rocks, of aloes, often in bloom, of rough steps going down to the shore, or a little farther away, where the height of Lapad can be seen crowning the city, of olives and stony roads; always with the blue sea stretching from below towards and beyond the grey town shut so securely within its walls. Beyond is the romantically, situated deserted convent of S. Giacomo degli Olivi, and from it paths wander farther among olives and cypresses along the edge of the cliff, below which, on the level of the water, is the grotto Spila Betina.
The Republic was a curious mixture of enlightenment and oriental backwardness. In 1335 the whole town was paved, a great sewer was constructed, and there were regulations about tiling and other constructional matters. Traffic in slaves was abolished by act of the Greater Council on January 26, 1416. In 1432 a foundling hospital was established, and in 1435 public schools. All who died of the plague in 1430 were burnt, by advice of the Ferrarese physician Giacomo Godwaldo, who also established the custom of isolating the sick some years before. Yet, in the state prisons below the small loggia, prisoners were sometimes walled up alive, and dungeons existed flooded at high tide, without any precautions being taken to prevent it. The treatment of women was quite oriental. In 1462 girls above the age of twelve were not allowed outside the house, and were seen only by their relations and by ecclesiastics; and, of course, marriages were arranged by the parents. In the theatre, only noble women and those of the citizen class were admitted. The sumptuary laws were strict. Nobles and public officials above eighteen were obliged to wear a large loose robe and black hose. It is recorded that a certain Tuberone Cerva came into the Senate one day with a robe longer than the prescribed measure, and it was cut short then and there, which mortified him so much that he turned monk. At funerals they had hired mourners, which again suggests oriental influences.