Split tour

Welcome to my hometown of Split.

In 295, the Roman king Diocletian began and in 305 completed the construction of a palace on the site of today's city of Split. This is the same city and the emperor about which Gosha spoke in the film Moscow does not believe in tears. Everyone remembers the legendary scene from the film in which Gosha explains to Sashenka that not everyone wants to be leaders and how: “There was such a Roman emperor Diocletian, by the way, a very decent emperor, so to speak, in the heyday of his empire, he suddenly gave up power and retired to his village, and when they came from Rome to ask him to return to power, he said: “If you had seen what kind of cabbage I grew, you would stop persuading me.”

It all happened in Split. Of course, we won’t find Diocletian’s cabbage, but a well-preserved palace. In Split, people live inside the museum, there are 300 of them, without an entrance ticket!

Let’s start at the southern part of the palace, where the port of the city and immediately go to the basement. No ticket is required because the palace is always open.

The palace was surrounded by high walls and had 16 towers on its walls. Four gates led into it: Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron. We're going to start with the Bronzes, who discover the magical world of basements, their unique way of building walls. This is where Game of Thrones was filmed, where Daenerys trains dragons.

The city is 1715 years old, and the sphinx, which stands on the ancient Peristile (main square) is 3,500 years old (Diocletian brought it from Egypt).

If you want to enter the former mausoleum of Emperor Diocletian, today it is the Cathedral of St. Duillet, the temple of the god Jupiter and go up to the bell tower entrance fee is 6 €. If you want only in the mausoleum and the temple, the cost will be 3.5 euros. Of course, it is possible without this, because the whole palace is an open-air museum.

Let’s see where the imperial summer veranda was, where the dining room was, and where the lobby was – a large round hall with a domed ceiling, which led to the personal chambers of the emperor.

We will talk about the unique facts of the Roman Empire of this period and why he became emperor. Who was his wife and who was his daughter. It is very important to understand that the Western Roman Empire ended in Split with the death of Julius Nepotus in 476. If we find the street where he was killed, it will be interesting to reconstruct this historic event.

The most important thing is to feel the city of the third and fourth centuries AD, to find narrow streets, to hide part of the antique inside the courtyards of residential buildings that guests do not notice and cannot find.

You should also see the small church of St. Martin (the cost of a ticket is about 3 EUR per person) from the 6th century, where the nuns of the Dominican Order live and see what the altar looked like in the churches before the Schism of the Christian Church in 1054. Then we will see the new part of the palace / city, which developed in the 13th century, on the site of the Iron Gate (in the Middle Ages, the old part of the city was connected to the new), where Diocletian grew cabbage.

And Pushkin Square, Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky streets - all this in Split and along our route.

Then there is an eight-meter bronze statue of Grgur of Ninsky, who was bishop in 900-929 and whom the Croats adored because he translated the liturgy of the Roman rite into Old Slavonic, and service books began to be written in Glagolitic. Cyril and Methodius brought us literacy.

Close and the tower of the city castle, from 1435, was created for the Venetian garrison, and next to it is a copper monument to the poet Mark Marulic (1450-1524), who printed the first book in Croatian - "Judita". This is the famous widow Judith from Jewish literature. There is an ancient synagogue in Split. It's a fabulous place. I would like to add that Marulic processed this story, inspired by the heroic struggle of the Croats against the Ottoman Empire, and that even Henry VIII and Thomas More read it.

The square at the end of the promenade is called Prokurative and resembles St. Mark’s Square in Venice. It will be interesting to know where our Diocletian can be found in Venice.

Be sure to see the fish market, all these shells, octopuses, shrimp, oysters and other incomprehensible things.

How do you know without me that pashtitsada, gregada, buzara or brudet and what kind of cake to try in Split?!

For tourists, it is especially interesting at the Stari Pazar or Green Market, where the mentality of people who live on the islands and people who live inside Zagori (from the sea 30-40 km) is mixed. Split has always been a city of these two mentalities, and that’s why it’s so colorful.

Then we walk to the first survey on Mount Maryan, where the most beautiful view of the city.

Russian cosmonauts once said that the bluest sea is the Adriatic. We say the Jadransko Sea, it is truly beautiful and will always be with us.

P.S. In the May issue of the magazine Miracles and Adventures, another famous downshifter is the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The first is the philosopher Diogenes. :)

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