Sephardic heritage in Croatia. Visitors profile in Split and Dubrovnik

Abstract

Sephardic heritage represents the heritage of the Jewish community expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, which then largely dispersed across the Mediterranean. In Croatia, Sephardic Jews settled in Split and Dubrovnik, where they participated in the
social, economic and cultural progress of these cities. Today, these communities still exist, and their heritage has been preserved. Cemeteries and synagogues are functional, but not active. The development of tourism in Split and Dubrovnik allows Sephardic
heritage to be actively included in the tourism supply of the cities. The objective of the research is to determine the profile of visitors to Sephardic heritage sites and their satisfaction with the sites visited in Split and Dubrovnik. For this purpose, a survey was conducted among visitors to the Jewish cemetery in Split and the synagogue in Dubrovnik. The research was conducted in 2022 and 2023 on a sample of 264 visitors. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) methods were used. In addition to the multivariate analysis of variance, additional analyses using the chi-square test were conducted. The results showed that visitors to Sephardic heritage sites are typical cultural tourists, although there are differences between visitors in Split and Dubrovnik, which is attributed to the location of the sites in the city.