Day 65 ~ Split, Croatia & Diocletian's Palace

 March 15, 2022

56 degrees, sunny, no wind. I was able to take off my jacket during our walking tour!

NAUTICAL TERM OF THE DAY ~ Batten Down the Hatches

Prepare for trouble, take precautionary measures. This idiom comes from the sailing practice of securing a ship's hatchways to prepare for bad weather. (Fortunately, we've been enjoying placid seas and no rain, so no battening around here!)

Our walking tour of Diocletian's palace will take us from the harbor to that tallest church tower. It's a source of great irony that though Diocletian was a terrible scourge to Christians during his reign, his summer palace is now the setting for this lovely house of worship!

Split, Croatia is another new-to-us port in an itinerary that offers us more first times than repeats by a wide margin (14 to 5 currently). Our guide, Milenka, made the tour so informative and so enjoyable, the three hours of walking sped by quickly. Her name, she confided, is a very old fashioned one and actually means either "mistress" as in "a kept woman" or a "little girl." Neither is a very auspicious meaning and combined they are dreadful, so she told us her code name is "Anna."

Here's Milenka with an artist's rendering of what the palace looked like during the reign of Diocletian (284-316 AD). He had the palace built here because he was born in the region. The emperor's portion were the southern & eastern squares, while his army occupied the western & northern, which later became a medieval town. Of the 16 towers, only three are extant. The Venetians fancied the stone and made off with them. It seems unfair to take another country's buildings apart for your own use, but remember, the Venetians also stole the body of St. Mark (just the body--the head didn't make the trip) from Alexandria because they felt their city deserved an important patron saint. Of course, they had no hesitation about taking dressed stone.  

My great-grandfather would've admired Roman construction. He always called anything built to last "hell for stout!" I guess a couple of milennia qualifies.

We entered through the sea gate and came into this cavernous chamber. Game of Thrones fans will recognize it as one of the settings in that series. In ancient times, it was primarily for support for the storey above it where the emperor's rooms were. This space was used alternately for storage, protection against flooding (Please see the photo above. This would've been at or slightly below sea level), and sometimes simply as a midden. Trash would be dropped into it from upper stories like a fetid laundry chute. When the stench of rotting things became too pungent, they would deposit a layer of lye in the space to settle the microbes down. Now, it's been cleaned, restored and after WWII had a new floor installed. What a job!

Milenka says she's pretty sure Diocletian didn't look this much like Sean Connery. From the coinage of his time, his face was much pudgier. She also told us her church venerates over a thousand saints. Half of them were martyred under Diocletian. Handsome is as handsome does, my dad always says.

 

Maybe the whole Game of Thrones thing was getting to me, but I could almost see a snub-nosed dragon encased in stone in this caved-in area.

Most of Diocletian's actual apartments are gone. Over the years, people built houses on top of the solid lower level and continued to occupy the fortified space. When they began clearing out the lower story, they discovered the garbage had helped hold up the houses above it and few homes were lost this way. Who knew trash could be useful?

The octagonal building was originally designed to be Diocletian's tomb. However, he didn't rest there long. It's now been turned into a Christian church!

People still have homes inside the palace. Milenka calls it "living with history." It used to be a cheap place to live because it's terribly inconvenient--no elevators, no vehicle could ever negotiate its narrow lanes, and there are limits to how much renovation can be done--but since tourism has picked up, it's now some of the priciest real estate in the city. Much of the space has been snapped up for B & B's or boutique hotels. 

Here's the DH's contribution to the blog today: 

We're planning a change for our evening schedule. Instead of going to supper at 6, we're meeting Kristy & Dave in the Atrium at 6:30 to listen to Enrico give a piano recital at 7:00 pm. He's playing Chopin tonight! Then we'll have a late supper at 7:45 and skip the magician who's prestidigitating in the Star Theater. (He was performing a few nights ago and one evening with him was enough.) But I could never get tired of hearing Enrico play! 

Tomorrow, we'll be docked in Fusina for Venice. The Venetians have closed their harbor to cruise ships, so we'll have a 30 minute bus ride to and from the jumping off point of all tours. Last time we were in Venice, it was Easter Sunday and the city was ridiculously crowded. We're hoping to be able to see the interior of St. Mark's Basilica this time. (Not hoping to see the body of the Gospel writer!)   

More soon!