3o4 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
in 1667 it must have been much more than 5600.1 The damage done to the buildings was less than might have been expected. It is true that the Venetian Provveditore of Cattaro, who happened to be at Gravosa at the time, wrote that “ with the exception of the public granary, the dogana, the fortifications, and the lazarets, all the buildings, both public and private, including the Palace, the churches, and the monasteries, were ruined and destroyed ” ; while Vitale Andriasci stated that “ nothing of the city remained standing but the fortresses and the circuit of the walls, which were injured in many places, and a few dismantled houses.” But these writers were probably excited by the awful spectacle and fell into exaggeration. The Duomo was so greatly damaged that it was necessary to rebuild it from the foundations. The upper story of the Rector’s Palace was severely, but not hopelessly, injured. The church of San Biagio suffered considerably, but survived until destroyed by fire forty years later. The Dominican and Franciscan monasteries, including their towers, remained almost intact; while the Sponza, the clock-tower, the churches of St. Nicholas, the Ascension, St. Luke, the Saviour, the Annunciation, the granaries, the lazarets, &c., were in no worse condition. Of the private dwellings, those in the Stradone all fell down, and were rebuilt later; but many of those on the slopes of the Monte Sergio survived, as is proved by the
   1 Among the killed was George Crook, the Dutch ambassador to the Porte, and his family and four servants, who had arrived at Ragusa four days before the earthquake on their way to Constantinople ; the rest of his suite, including Jakob Vandam, Dutch consul at Smyrna, were saved. Vandam wrote an account of this calamity in his Old and New State of Dalmatia.