Split - Split - The rest of the palace

North of the Peristyle, Dioklecijanova follows the line of the former cardo past rows of tottering medieval houses. A right turn down Papalićeva leads to the Juraj Dalmatinac-designed Papalić Palace, a typical example of the sturdy Gothic town houses built by Split's fifteenth-century aristocracy. An unobtrusive gateway leads through to a secluded, ivy-covered courtyard centred on a well adorned with the star and feathers symbol of the Papalić family, with a delicate loggia at ground level and an outdoor stone stairway leading to the first-floor apartments. It now houses the City Museum (Gradski muzej; Tues–Fri 9am–noon & 5-8pm, Sat & Sun 10am–noon), with well-laid-out displays of medieval weaponry, figureheads from eighteenth-century galleys and sculptural fragments – including a serene Pieta by Nikola Fiorentinac. The reconstructed Papalić dining room on the first floor contains pictures and manuscripts relating to Marko Marulić (1450-1524), author of the biblically inspired epic Judita and the first Dalmatian poet to abandon Latin in favour of Croatian.
Continuing north along DiokleciJanova soon brings you to the grandest and best preserved of the palace gates, the Golden Gate (Zlatna vrata). This was the landward – and therefore most important – entrance to the palace, and the beginning of the main road to Salona. The arched niches (now empty) originally contained statues, and the four plinths on top of the gate once supported likenesses of Diocletian and the three other tetrarchs.
Just outside the gate there's another Mestrovi6 work, the gigantic statue of the tenth-century Bishop Grgur Ninski. It was completed in 1929 to mark the 1000th anniversary of the Synod of Split, at which Grgur, Bishop of Nin, fought for the right of his people to use their own language in the liturgy instead of Latin. Catching the bishop in stiff mid-gesture, it's more successful as a patriotic statement than as a piece of sculpture. This mammoth used to stand in the Peristyle before it was moved during World War II, when the Italian occupiers attempted to cleanse the town centre of anything resembling a Croatian national symbol.

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