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Published: December 28th 2023
Me, Bell Tower
St Lawrence's Cathedral, TrogirDear All
Greetings from Split! This is another amazing Croatian city, though really quite different to Dubrovnik. Being Croatia's second largest city at 265,000 people, it is a large and busy urban area with sprawling suburbs filled with communist-era residential tower blocks and hulking great port and industrial areas. Dubrovnik, on the other hand, was slow-paced and deeply charming, a quaint and seriously splendid little city with a comparatively diminutive 40,000 residents. Whilst different, Split also packed a punch (almost) as good as Dubrovnik to me, most notably with its unbelievable Diocletian's Palace right in the heart of town, more on that below.
I must admit, I was a little disappointed with the way I arrived there though. I had originally planned a fast ferry ride from Dubrovnik to spend three hours on the island of Korčula, and then another fast ferry from there on to Split, thus to include a bit of Croatian island-hopping on my journey. But unfortunately due to the high winds which had closed the Cable Car up Mt Srd back in Dubrovnik, both ferries were also cancelled! With winds up to and above 50mph though, it was probably a good idea not to set
sail on the high seas on this day! I was fortunately able to book a bus to Split instead, which turned out to be a good journey. The bus was fully-booked and seriously cramped, presumably due to the cancelling of the ferries. I ended up on the back row by the window with more amazing coastal Croatian views for half of the journey before the route took us inland, and was sitting next to a lovely and very friendly Christian mother and daughter travelling duo from New Zealand - I felt blessed and honoured to talk with them.
While a visit to one of Croatia's famed islands was unfortunately off the cards this time, my disappointment was actually just about made up for by getting to travel along the newly-built Pelješac Bridge, completed just last year in 2022. If you look at a map of Bosnia and Croatia, the former has a tiny sliver of coastline around its only port town of Neum. Only five miles long, it still forms a lifeline for Bosnia to reach the outside world by sea, and thus avoiding it becoming landlocked. This does mean, however, that Dubrovnik and its stretch of coastline is
completely cut off by land from the rest of Croatia. Prior to last year, this bus route I was travelling on would have briefly entered and exited Bosnia along its journey, creating I'm sure all manner of political issues given that Croatia has been a member of the European Union since 2013. But by building this bridge from the Pelješac peninsula to the main Croatian mainland, such international diplomatic headaches are avoided, and it was a very cool way for me on this journey to see this new 2.5km bridge construction.
I arrived in Split just before 5pm, and headed straight to my accommodation - a self-catering studio right in the heart of Diocletian's Palace itself! What a special place to stay, and what an honour to be sojourning in the very same palace built for the retirement of a Roman Emperor, himself originally from Dalmatia, nearly 2000 years ago! The place was originally built at the end of the 3rd century AD for said Emperor, but became the resting place of choice for many a Roman official afterwards. I particularly love the name of each of the four entrances, entering the Palace from each of its four surrounding
St Domnius Cathedral
Diocletian's Palace, Split squared walls: the Brass Gate from the south, Iron Gate from the west, Golden Gate from the north, and Silver Gate from the east. Upon the collapse of the Roman Empire, and as marauding Slavs were heading into the Balkan region, the town's inhabitants took refuge in the Palace itself, which has survived all these centuries as the residential and commercial centre of the wider city of Split.
Bags down, I headed out to explore this amazing Roman Palace just as the sun was setting and darkness was closing in. With all the ancient buildings, columns, arches, steps and paving stones magically lit up at night, the place took on a back-in-time feel, and many times on my wander I felt right in the middle of what life must have been like in both medieval and Roman times and cities. It was a very special wander. The highlight was arriving in the Palace's piece-de-resistance, St Domnius Cathedral, just in time for evening mass, my first mass in Croatian, and a particularly special location for a mass. I stocked up at a nearby supermarket, ready to call it an evening and very excited to explore more the next day. While
the accommodation was very unique and affordable, there was a family living upstairs who spent their time in the mornings and evenings continually thumping around, which was really quite disturbing even while wearing earplugs and using my white noise machine I always take with me on trips for such occasions. Fortunately they quietened down somewhat at night, but their presence was always there, and was a bit of a downer during my time in Split. Despite this, I actually slept well my first night, thankfully.
My full day of explorations in and around Split was really enjoyable. Although it rained heavily for most of the day, including a rather intense thunderstorm at one point, with my raincoat on and a bit of sheltering in key locations at times, I did not let this spoil the fun. In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more, as it made the places I visited much more atmospheric I think, and certainly kept the other tourists at bay.
After a morning walk through Diocletian's Palace, in simply just leaving my accommodation there, I first walked around the city's beautiful waterfront area, noting that there is actually a British Consulate there! I
St Domnius Cathedral
Diocletian's Palace, Split then took a train from the train station, my only train journey on this Croatian adventure, and in fact a rare occurrence there as there were only four trains scheduled to leave Split that day, this being one of them. Croatia is not really a big train-faring nation, they mostly travel around by bus and car. Still, it wasn't a long journey, and I got off just two stops and twelve minutes later in the highly industrial Split suburb of Solin, for an absolutely magical exploration of the ruins of the ancient Roman town of Salona there.
Salona was actually the ancient Roman centre of its province of Dalmatia, with a population of 60,000 people around the 3rd century when Diocletian himself was born there, and in fact Split itself only grew around the Emperor Diocletian's retirement place which he had built further down the coast from this centre. The highlights of my visit to the ruins were the remains of the amphitheatre there, a basilica called Kapljuč, another basilica called Manastirine, and the archaeological centre housed in a beautiful building and adjoining birdsong-filled garden called Tusculum. It was in the amphitheatre that St Domnius, Bishop of Salona who
was also born there around the same time as Diocletian, met a martyr's death at the hands of the very same Emperor Diocletian during his anti-Christian persecutions. St Domnius was subsequently buried in the Manastirine basicila when the city of Salona later accepted Christianity, while another five early Christian martyrs were buried at Kapljuč. St Domnius has the last laugh over Diocletian though, when the latter's tomb was removed from the Temple of Jupiter in the middle of his very own Diocletian's Palace, and replaced with the tomb of St Domnius. The Temple was also converted to a Christian place of worship, which became what we see today in the afore-mentioned and -visited St Domnius Cathedral.
I felt my visit to Salona really tied up lots of loose ends in my understanding of the Roman and early Christian history of Split, and the garden of Tusculum was also gorgeous to sit in when the rain stopped for a short while. The afore-mentioned thunderstorm happened in the middle of my visit, and I was actually rather afraid of a lighting strike while visiting Kapljuč as it was very exposed. I fortunately found refuge during the worst of the deluge under
a very solid Roman arch, when the wind howled and the rain came down in sheets. I thanked the ancient Romans for having been so considerate in building this arch here 2000 years ago, which gave me some well-needed shelter on this day today! It was also possible to see the ancient craggy mountain-top fortress of Klis in the far distance from Solano, which I was pleased about as I wasn't able to fit a visit to this particular gem into my day.
After this brilliant visit, I then took the number 37 bus 15 miles up the coast, passing through Split's Airport along the way, to spend the afternoon in the gorgeous island-city of Trogir. Trogir, along with Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Rab, Cres, and Kotor in Montenegro, form what are referred to as the Dalmatian city-states. These were individually-governed entities which flourished between the end of the Roman era and the arrival of the Venetians in the 11th century, but thereupon fell into continual decline due to the lack of interest in developing the region economically by the Venetians. Thus, what exists today are some really quite unique little towns which have changed little over the last 1000
years or so until they were re-discovered, if you like, by early Victorian tourists during the 19th century. Given their lack of recent development, their preservation is exceptional, and a walk around the three ancient city-states that I did visit, Dubrovnik, Split and now Trogir, was very much like travelling back in time.
Very much inspired by a fellow travel blogger's visit there (Hi Lori! 😁), I first headed up the bell tower of the city's main sight, St Lawrence's Cathedral, for some seriously awesome views all around, of the city and its small island below, over the surrounding sea, over to the adjacent larger island of Čiovo, and back towards the Croatian mainland. The views were awesome, and the rain was starting to ease up now with some hints of sunlight peeking through the clouds, which was an added bonus! I then circumnavigated the small island, measuring just 200m by 500m at its widest points, noting that parts of it were slightly flooded from the surrounding sea, including a couple of streets in the town itself. I wondered if the storm we'd been having for the last three days had caused some kind of storm surge to brew
or something.
I then crossed the small Čiovski Most bridge over to Čiovo Island to walk along part if its coast, returning to the Croatian mainland again by the more modern Croatian Veterans Bridge, built in 2001, before taking the number 37 bus back again to Split. By this time, evening was falling and the rain had stopped, so I took the opportunity to have another wander around the amazing Diocletian's Palace again before heading back to my accommodation. Again, I have to say, what a wonderful choice and opportunity to be able to stay right in the middle of such an amazing place, and I feel that with my numerous wanderings, I really learnt to find my way around and navigate the fascinating, labyrinthine streets there.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Split. While the weather was mostly stormy, windy and rainy, this only added to the allure of such an intriguing place. The next morning, I was taking an early 7am bus inland to my next destination, Croatia's famous Plitvice Lakes National Park, before heading on to my final destination on this mini Croatian adventure, the capital city of Zagreb.
But of course, more on
these in my next ones. Until then, thanks for reading, and all the best for now.
Alex
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Great visit!
Dave here.....we've always wanted to visit that corner of the continent. Looks like it was very enjoyable!