Monastery courtyards with their cultivated gardens encircled by cloisters are the ideal spaces for rest and contemplation for every traveller. They are numerous in Croatia and were built in different periods from the Romanesque and Gothic (the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik, below), through the Renaissance to the Baroque (the Franciscan monastery in Slavonski Brod, right). You will find them in every city, as well as in some secluded places, like the monastery of St. Peter in the Woods in Istria, with its chronologically reversed construction: the basement was built during the Renaissance (15th century), and the first floor, now restored old cloister, in the 13 th century.