7-day Dubrovnik self-drive itinerary

A week in Dubrovnik with independent Old Town days plus Lokrum, Elafiti, Trsteno, and Mljet, Korčula, or Montenegro — buses and boats first.

A week in Dubrovnik is easily done without a hire car: three unhurried days across the Old Town, the City Walls, and Lokrum Island, a full day out to the Elafiti Islands, a soft beach day paired with the Trsteno Arboretum, a longer sixth day choosing between Mljet, Korčula, or Montenegro, and a relaxed final day at Cavtat or the Pelješac wine villages. This independent itinerary runs on foot, the Libertas bus network, and public ferries, with nothing that genuinely benefits from a rental car unless you extend into the Pelješac Peninsula on day seven. Prefer hosted packages and fixed pickup times instead? Switch to 7-day Dubrovnik itinerary with guided tours.

How to pace a week

Base yourself near Pile or Ploče Gate for the first five nights for the shortest walk to the walls, the cable car, and the Old Port, or choose Lapad or Babin Kuk if beach access and value matter more than proximity. Do not plan on a car for the Old Town itself — it is entirely pedestrian, with zero vehicle access through any of its gates. Save a hire car for day seven if you want to reach the Pelješac Peninsula’s wine villages independently; every other day in this itinerary runs comfortably on buses, boats, and walking.

• One Old Town or Ploče-area base for the first five nights keeps this itinerary simple
• Check Gruž Port ferry timetables for the Elafiti Islands and Mljet or Korčula a few days ahead — schedules run on limited daily frequencies
• Consider a one-day hire car only for a Pelješac Peninsula wine trip on day seven — skip it for everything else
• Alternate a hard, walk-heavy day with a soft one throughout the week; the walls’ heat and steps add up fast

Use best day trips from Dubrovnik for ferry timings to Mljet, Korčula, and the border crossings for Montenegro and Mostar, and keep day seven loose for packing or a slower finish rather than cramming in one more sight.

The route at a glance

• Day 1 — Arrive; Old Town orientation and Stradun
• Day 2 — The City Walls, Fort Lovrijenac, and War Photo Limited
• Day 3 — Cable car to Srđ and Lokrum Island
• Day 4 — Elafiti Islands by public ferry
• Day 5 — Soft beach day and the Trsteno Arboretum
• Day 6 — Mljet, Korčula, or Montenegro (Kotor Bay)
• Day 7 — Cavtat, or the Pelješac wine villages

Day 1 — Arrive; Old Town orientation

Settle into your base, then ease in with an afternoon walking Stradun from Pile Gate to the Clock Tower and Old Port, ducking into the Franciscan Monastery’s cloister and one of Europe’s oldest working pharmacies, and taking in the Rector’s Palace, Sponza Palace, and the Cathedral of the Assumption clustered near the harbor. With a full week ahead, there’s no need to rush any of it — stop for an early dinner on a terrace overlooking the water and let jet lag or ferry fatigue fade with a genuinely slow first evening rather than a packed one.

Day 2 — City Walls, Fort Lovrijenac, and War Photo Limited

Give the City Walls a full morning: the roughly two-kilometer loop takes ninety minutes to two and a half hours with real elevation change, and with a week ahead you can pace it slowly, stopping often at the viewpoints near Minčeta Tower and along the seaward stretch above Fort Bokar. In the afternoon, visit Fort Lovrijenac just outside the walls — the freestanding fortress that doubled as King’s Landing’s Red Keep in Game of Thrones and offers one of the best photo angles back onto the Old Town — then spend an hour at War Photo Limited, a small but powerful gallery inside the walls documenting the 1991–92 siege and other global conflicts through photojournalism.

• Buy City Walls tickets online and aim for opening (around 8am) or after 4:30–5pm to avoid the worst cruise-ship crowds
• Check the day’s published cruise-ship schedule — Old Town crowding tracks closely with how many ships are in port
• War Photo Limited is small; budget forty-five minutes to an hour, not a full afternoon

Day 3 — Srđ cable car and Lokrum Island

Ride the cable car up Mount Srđ from its base just above Ploče Gate for a four-minute ascent to a summit view that reframes the whole Old Town from above. The Homeland War Museum inside Napoleon-era Fort Imperial covers the siege of Dubrovnik through photographs taken from this exact ridge, and the summit restaurant makes a good lunch stop before heading back down. In the afternoon, take one of the frequent small ferries from the Old Port to Lokrum, a fifteen-minute crossing to a nature reserve with a ruined Benedictine monastery, a botanical garden with peacocks wandering freely, and a warm, calm saltwater lake known locally as the "Dead Sea."

• Book cable car tickets online for a set time slot in peak summer; queues at the base build fast by mid-morning
• Lokrum allows no overnight stays; check the last ferry back before you head over
• Look for the replica Iron Throne near Lokrum’s old fortress, a nod to its Game of Thrones filming history

Day 4 — Elafiti Islands by public ferry

Head to Gruž Port for the Jadrolinija public ferry out to the Elafiti Islands — Koločep, Lopud, and Šipan — three small, largely car-free islands with pine-covered coastline and a slower pace than anything back in the Old Town. Lopud is the standout: a short walk (or golf-cart taxi) from its harbor leads to Šunj Beach, a genuinely sandy crescent bay that’s rare on this stretch of Croatian coast. Koločep offers quiet coves and shaded pine paths, while Šipan, the largest and least visited of the three, has a slower, more agricultural character with olive groves and two small harbor villages.

• Public ferries run a limited number of times daily — check the current Gruž Port timetable a few days ahead and plan your island order around it
• Lopud and Koločep are entirely car-free; Šipan permits a handful of local vehicles but nothing worth renting
• An organized Elafiti Islands boat tour is a good fallback if the public ferry schedule doesn’t line up with your day

Day 5 — Soft beach day and the Trsteno Arboretum

Keep the morning easy at Banje Beach, just outside Ploče Gate with a direct view of the walls and Lokrum, or take the bus to Lapad Bay for more room and a longer promenade. In the afternoon, take a local bus about thirty minutes north to the Trsteno Arboretum, the oldest arboretum on the Adriatic coast, planted from the 15th century onward around a Renaissance summer villa, with a striking 500-year-old aqueduct and giant plane trees that also appear as King’s Landing’s gardens in Game of Thrones. It’s a small, easily walked site that pairs naturally with a relaxed beach morning.

• Trsteno Arboretum is compact — an hour or two covers it comfortably alongside a beach morning
• Local buses run to Trsteno from the main bus station, but check the schedule since services are less frequent than Old Town routes
• Banje Beach needs no transfer at all from an Old Town or Ploče base

Day 6 — Mljet, Korčula, or Montenegro

With a full week to work with, day six is the itinerary’s big outing. A DIY trip to Mljet National Park covers roughly a third of the island protected around two saltwater lakes, Veliko and Malo Jezero, with a boat ride out to St Mary’s Island’s 12th-century monastery and time to cycle or swim around the shore. A ferry or catamaran to Korčula instead reaches a walled Old Town often compared to a smaller Dubrovnik, with a Gothic-Renaissance cathedral, narrow herringbone-patterned streets designed to funnel sea breeze through the town, and the house said to be Marco Polo’s birthplace. A bus trip to Montenegro crosses the border to Kotor Bay, a fjord-like inlet ringed by mountains, with a climb up Kotor’s Old Town walls and often a stop in the small Baroque town of Perast.

• Check current catamaran or ferry schedules to Mljet or Korčula a few days ahead — both run on limited daily frequencies
• Bring a passport for Montenegro, even on a day trip — it crosses an international, non-Schengen border
• Pick Mljet for nature and lakes, Korčula for a walled old town with fewer crowds than Dubrovnik, or Montenegro for dramatic bay scenery and a second country

Day 7 — Cavtat, or the Pelješac wine villages

For a low-key finish, take the local bus or a seasonal passenger boat to Cavtat, a small Baroque harbor town about twenty kilometers south with a palm-lined waterfront promenade, the Vlaho Bukovac gallery, and the hilltop Račić family mausoleum by sculptor Ivan Meštrović. If you’d rather spend your last full day inland, this is the one point in the week where a rented car for the day genuinely helps: the Pelješac Peninsula, roughly an hour’s drive north, is home to the Dingač and Postup wine regions producing the bold Plavac Mali red, and the fortified town of Ston, famous for its "Walls of Ston" (Europe’s second-longest defensive wall system after the Great Wall of China) and centuries-old oyster farming in the calm waters of Mali Ston Bay.

• Cavtat needs no rental car — the local bus or seasonal boat covers it easily
• A Pelješac day trip is the one point in this week where a one-day hire car makes genuine sense, given the drive time and rural wine-village roads
• Book a Ston oyster lunch or a Dingač winery tasting ahead in peak season; smaller family operations sometimes take visitors by appointment only

Self-drive vs packages for a week

Independent weeks in Dubrovnik cost less in tour fees and let you linger where you like — an extra hour on the walls at sunset, a longer lunch in Ston, a detour down an Old Town lane that looked interesting. Guided weeks cost more but remove the planning for the Elafiti ferry’s limited schedule, Montenegro’s border crossing, and Pelješac’s rural back roads, with hotel pickup helping on early boat mornings. Mix freely: DIY Old Town days plus one guided Montenegro or Mljet tour is a popular hybrid. Full package stack: 7-day Dubrovnik itinerary with guided tours.

Eating without wasting half the day

Restaurants set back a street or two from Stradun and the harbor-front terraces are usually better value and better food than the sit-down spots with the best views and the highest markups. Try crni rižot (cuttlefish-ink black risotto), fresh Adriatic fish, and Pelješac’s Pošip and Plavac Mali wines, and save one nicer waterfront dinner for the middle of the week rather than every night. If your week is shorter than seven nights, see the 5-day Dubrovnik self-drive itinerary for a tighter version of this route, and the Dubrovnik destination guide for neighbourhood-level detail.