A closer look
Dubrovnik became utterly paralyzed by mass tourism after serving as the filming location for King's Landing in Game of Thrones, leading to gridlocked medieval streets where it takes an hour just to walk a hundred feet down the Stradun. The ancient stone walls were designed to repel hostile naval sieges and foreign armadas, but they proved completely defenseless against thousands of aggressive middle-aged tourists wearing novelty t-shirts and demanding to know where the dragons live. You have to appreciate the irony of a breathtaking historical city surviving devastating earthquakes and centuries of actual brutal warfare, only to be totally conquered and culturally strip-mined by fans of a television show with a famously terrible finale
