This is a view of Dubrovnik you will struggle to find in any travel guide; yes your eyes aren’t deceiving you, that is a Zeppelin flying above Dubrovnik.

Eighty-seven years ago, on the 27th of March 1929, a Zeppelin flew above Dubrovnik; this was to be the first time, and the last time, that a Zeppelin would hover over the city. At that time is was a Zeppelin was the elite way to travel, although it may seem like flying in a death-trap nowadays.

The photo of the massive blimp over Dubrovnik is in fact a Photoshop trick; no photographic evidence of this historical event was taken. However there was a witness, Antun Zago. He was on a ship, the Calgaric, at the time the Zeppelin flew over the city, anchored in front of Dubrovnik. He noted that the Zeppelin “moved quietly with the work of a single engine as it flew over the city.”

Historical archives in Dubrovnik have records on the movements of the monster blimp, which apparently arrived from the southeast and hovered over the city for a short time. It certainly must have been an attraction when it hung in the sky, possibly blocking out the sun.

There were 41 crew members and 25 passengers on board the Zeppelin LZ-127 that day. The blimp was on a round journey from Friedrichshafen to Egypt. On its way south it passed over the Rhone valley, Basel, Marseilles, Corsica, Rome, Naples, Capri, Crete, Cyprus, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and arrived in Cairo. And on the way back the Zeppelin LZ-127 passed over the Aegean Sea, Athens, Dubrovnik, Zagreb and Vienna. The whole adventure took four days and in that time the Zeppelin had passed a total of eight thousand kilometres.

Among the passengers on this historic flight over Dubrovnik was the president of the German Reichstag Paul Loeb, and members of the then nobility, it must have been a flight and experience to remember.