10 Diocletian's Palace

Following our morning at Šibenik, we entered the famed city of Split, the second largest city in Croatia. Split dates back to the Roman Empire and now shines as a major metropolis with all the modern elements of a large industrial city. Like most cities along the Dalmatian Coast, cars have made way for the people. Large promenades separate the harbors from the old part of the city. Also like most Dalmatian Cities, Split has a storied past, among the most interesting. Diocletian, one of the last Roman Emperors, grew up in the Split region. For his golden years, he built a grand villa adjacent to the Split Bay. The split-level retirement home took only 10 years to build. Its square shape measures two football fields on each side. In its prime, it was staffed by 700 servants. The back “porch” and Diocletian’s main living quarters butt up against the Adriatic Sea. I suppose he could have water skied directly from his bedroom window. Diocletian was a prosperous, skilled Emperor but he was also known for his brutal persecution of Christians. Following the fall of Rome, the palace was abandoned and nomad squatters too up residence. To solve their sewage needs, they dug holes in the main floor to the basement and simply filled up the basement with waste ... stinky. The Palace changed hands a few times over the centuries and was later converted to a Catholic church. Ironically what Diocletian built to glorify in his memory is used instead to remember his victims, Christian martyrs. One such statue in the Cathedral depicts a saint with a millstone tied to his neck.

The Palace is the main tourist draw. It currently houses over 500 residence and is the home of many well placed restaurants and souvenir shops. The large basement area, a former garbage dump, is now a museum as well as an active archeological dig site of antiquities. Petey and I explored the Palace nooks and crannies. We pet the bronze toe of St. John, we toured the Cathedral of St. Dominus, gazed at the Roman built face ceiling and statue of John the Baptist in the baptistery once a temple of Zeus. On the baptistery face is an interesting cutout of an 11th-century king standing next to a bishop with a citizen underneath their feet … the secular power, religious power and the people respecting the two powers.

During our exploration, we ran into the well-known Klapa singers stirring the souls of bus tour groups performing traditional a cappella harmonies in the rotunda, a brick lined area open to the sky. They sang of loves lost and loves found. The acoustics in the rotunda were amazing. Their sound was crystal clear, enchanting. I could have stood there listening for hours but the singers started and stopped as the tour groups passed by. I captured a live song on my iPhone. Just outside the rotunda area I was stopped by two Roman guards. They investigated me vigorously ... then asked if I could spare a dime since they were poor college students. It was a sympathetic shakedown, a Roman Tax! I passed them a 5-kuna each and they went on their way. Later I paid the 20 kuna for the basement museum … meh.