Let’s Split
Monday, May 31st, 2010Way back in February, when I assumed (correctly) that Swiss immigration would not ask for a return/onward flight when I arrived from the United States but that the airline would, I bought a budget one-way flight from Geneva to Split in Croatia, one of the closest non-EU/Shengen countries, just to be safe. Four months later, here I am: the need to get out of the Shengen zone for a while sees me travelling without Wendy for the first time in eight years.
I arrived in Split on Saturday night and yesterday morning began my first exploration of the former Yugoslavia. The central attraction of Split, of course, is the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian, who built the palace near the Roman town of Salona after he became the first sitting emperor to voluntarily stand down in the first years of the fourth century AD. He spent the rest of his days living in his enormous palace and planting cabbages.
Today, the palace is an extraordinary ruin, unique in the former Roman Empire in that it is a living city that has never been abandoned since the residents of Salona took up there several centuries after Diocletian’s death. Within the walls of the palace today there are Roman columns, basements, marble debris, an old Pagan temple and the intact mausoleum of the visionary emperor himself – but that’s only half the story. There are also Renaissance mini-palaces, churches and houses, and in the 21st century it all comes together in a fabulously mismatched city-within-a-city. Today, 3000 people live inside the palace walls, many in buildings with Roman foundations, and it’s still the beating heart of Split. Wandering through the palace is a great delight and you never know what you might come across – like a modern bank with an original Roman column standing in front of the tellers. All of this makes Diocletian’s palace one of the most fascinating Roman sights I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something. I’ve probably spent about 4-5 hours wandering through it over the past two days, and I’m not done yet.
The other highlight of my trip so far was a morning spent at World Heritage listed Trogir, a small medieval city about 25km from Split. The architecture (including a glorious Romanesque church), the setting and the boats on the city’s shore gave it a classic Mediterranean feel, a world away from the same-period Germanic village of Stein am Rhein that we visited the previous weekend in Northeast Switzerland. I happily wandered the streets of Trogir for a few hours revelling in the beauty of the place. As a contrast to Diocletian’s Palace, which is very hodge-podge and disorderly (and I say that with love), Trogir is better laid out but still retains its laid-back Mediterranean air.
Today I had planned to go to the island of Hvar for the day, but the forecast of rain and the prospect of a 10.5 hour day-trip (as the boats aren’t running with high season frequency yet) meant that I decided to stay in Split, explore the palace some more, and plan my next move. Tomorrow I’m hoping to visit the ruins of Salona and then travel by bus across the Bosnia & Hercegovina border to Sarajevo. It’s a city that has intrigued me for years because I love the name, because it’s known as the European Jerusalem owing to a significant presence of all three monotheistic religions, and because it’s hard to imagine that it’s only been 15 years since the city was liberated from a three-year siege during the wars that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Nick