Diocletian's Palace

Diocletian, the emperor who divided power among four rulers and then did something rare for a Roman emperor — abdicated, in 305 — chose a peninsula on the Dalmatian coast for his retirement, a few kilometres from Salona, the provincial capital. The residence he built there from around 295 is less a palace than a fortified town: an irregular rectangle roughly 215 by 175 metres, laid out like a legionary camp, with towers along its three landward walls and an arcaded gallery on the side facing the sea. Half of it housed the emperor, the rest his garrison and servants. Most of the white stone came from the island of Brač; granite columns and a dozen sphinxes were shipped from Egypt.

What makes the palace unique is what happened next. When Salona was sacked in the 7th century, its refugees moved inside the walls, and they never left. Houses, churches and shops filled the courtyards and streets, and the palace became the core of Split. Today it still forms about half of the old town, with some 3,000 residents living inside it, and the medieval city is built into the Roman walls rather than beside them.

The main street from the northern Golden Gate leads to the Peristyle, the colonnaded court where the emperor appeared before his subjects. On one side, Diocletian's own mausoleum became the Cathedral of Saint Domnius, with a Romanesque bell tower added in the Middle Ages. Opposite, the small Temple of Jupiter was converted into a baptistery; one of the three surviving sphinxes crouches in front of it, headless, and another still sits on the Peristyle. Beyond the domed vestibule, where the imperial apartments stood, the vaulted substructures beneath them survive almost complete — among the best-preserved Roman basements anywhere — and reveal the floor plan of the lost rooms above.

The palace has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. It was a filming location for the fourth season of Game of Thrones. Walking in from the seafront through the modest Sea Gate, once the emperor's private landing, gives the best sense of how the building met the water.

Getting there

The palace is in the centre of Split, on the seafront. Split Saint Jerome Airport (SPU) lies about 12 km away in a straight line. Most of the complex is living streets and squares.