Wednesday 19th April – Split.

 Another easy start to the day, plenty of fuel in the form of breakfast, and we were off the ship around 10am ready to investigate the charms of Split.

I had done a little research before we came away, and I had worked out there were some key places to visit, but I didn’t really understand what I’d read.  Once we’d walked the 10 mins or so from the ship to the old town, and then walked through the Brass Gate, it began to make sense.

The very unassuming Brass Gate between these two buildings.

The Roman Emperor Diocletian was from Croatia. He’d was a good emperor, and also did something very unusual for an emperor, he retired.  He planned it years before and built himself a massive palace to retire to in what is now Split. It was finished in 305 AD, and he lived there for 11 years before he died.  A good deal of that palace is still standing, with much of the old town built into it.  The Brass Gate that we’d just walked through was one of the doorways into the palace.  

Actually, the Brass Gate leads into the basement halls of the palace.  It’s a huge area, quite an amazing space with loads of rooms large and small that just seemed to go on one after another after another. For €7 each we could go have a wander, so we did.

From there we went on into the rest of the palace grounds.  First there was more of the basement, where all the souvenir stalls were set up.  There was some really nice stuff, but I don’t understand why rucksacks made in Nepal were being sold on craft stalls in Croatia?

Onwards and upwards to the ‘Peristil’, a central courtyard in the palace grounds. As we pottered around we came across an operatic trio making use of the acoustics of one of the remaining roman rooms.  An awesome sound!

For €12 each, we could visit the Cathedral and the Bell Tower with the Treasury Museum thrown in for free.

The bell tower is relatively modern, with very high steep steps at the bottom before opening out to the space you can see in the photograph below.

The Cathedral is definitely an old roman building that had been converted.  The carved lions at the entrance, the huge marble pillars and the hunting frieze circling the ceiling were among the many clues.  And to think the original building dates from 305 AD!

The rest of our time there, we simply explored.  We passed Jupiter’s Temple, walked out of the Iron Gate, bought lunch from what seemed to be the Croatian equivalent of Greggs, took photo’s of the Gold Gate and wandered back into the area of the palace through the Silver Gate.  All in all a good day’s wandering.

 

Peter dwarfed by the statue at the Gold Gate

And that was Split. 

Tomorrow we are in Rovinj, (pronounced Ro-VEEN).  No research done on this one, so I haven’t a clue what to expect.