156 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
inscription has no date, but it is close to two others of 1363 and 1428, and the style of the lettering, according to Jackson, is even earlier than 1363. The building was not begun until after 1319, when the former Franciscan monastery was destroyed, so that the date is somewhere between 1319 and 1363. Within the enclosure are orange trees and evergreen shrubs, and a graceful little fountain is placed in the centre; the whole scene forms a most charming picture of mediaeval monastic life. A second cloister higher up the hillside served as a garden where the simples for the monks1 pharmacy were grown. This, too, is a delightful old-world nook.
   At the opposite end of the town, just inside the Porta Ploce, stands the massive group of the Dominican church and monastery. These buildings originally formed the southern bulwark of the town, the monks themselves, like the Franciscans, being entrusted with the defence of the gate ; but later a second wall was built outside it. The church, which was begun in 1245 and completed in 1360, consists of a vast nave separated from a polygonal choir by a high arch. The building is extremely bare ; the traces of Gothic arches and clustered pillars form a sort of skeleton, around which the existing church was constructed in the seventeenth century. In the sacristy there are a few more fragments of early work, and the south doorway, with a round arch of many receding orders under an ogee crocketed hood mould, also belongs to the original church. Jackson notices a strong flavour of German Gothic in it. There are several pointed windows of extreme simplicity, and a large round