Split - The palace

Despite its importance, don't expect Diocletian's Palace to be an archeological "site": the shape and style of the palace have to be extrapolated from what remains, which itself is obscured by centuries of addition and alteration – the map opposite gives an idea of the palace's original ground plan, but doesn't show contemporary features. The palace occupies the eastern half of the old town, though apart from certain set-piece buildings – notably the cathedral (originally Diocletian's mausoleum) and the baptistry (once a temple) – it has been built upon so much by successive generations that it is no longer recognizable as an ancient Roman structure. Little remains of the imperial apartments, although the medieval tenements, shops and offices which have taken their place were built in large part using stones and columns salvaged from Diocletian's original buildings. Despite its architectural pedigree, the palace area hasn't always been the most desireable part of the city in which to live. During the inter-war period it was dubbed the get ("ghetto") and – abandoned to the urban poor, down-at-heel White Russian emigres and red-light bars – became synonymous with loose morals and shady dealings. Nowadays the palace area is once more the centre of urban life, hosting a daily melee of tourists and shoppers.
The best place to start exploring is on the seaward side, at Split's broad and lively waterfront, the Riva (officially the Obala hrvatskog naradnog preporoda, or Quay of the Croatian National Revival, although hardly anyone ever calls it that). Running along the palace's southern facade, into which shops, cafes and a warren of tiny flats have been built, the Riva is where a large part of the city's population congregates day and night to meet friends, catch up on gossip or idle away an hour or two in a cafe. It's also the obvious venue for mass gatherings and celebrations, most notably on July 10, 2001, when tens of thousands flocked here to welcome home native Splicanin and Wimbledon tennis champion Goran lvanišević The main approach to the palace from the Riva is through the Bronze Gate (Mjedena vrata), an anonymous and functional gateway that originally gave access to the sea, which once came right up to the palace. Inside is a vaulted space which once formed the basement of Diocletian's central hall, the middle part of his residential complex, now occupied by arts and crafts stalls. On either side of here stretch the subterranean halls (podrum; daily: summer 8am-8pm; winter 8am-noon & 4-7pm), built in Diocletian's time to support the apartments above - until 1956 they remained unexplored and full of centuries of debris. Parts have now been cleared out and opened to the public, and though there's nothing actually to see, they give an idea of what the palace must have once looked like, since their ground plan is an exact mirror of the imperial living quarters that formerly stood above. The long corridor which stretches east and west of the Bronze Gate corresponds to the cryptoporticus, or great gallery, along which the emperor would have promenaded. The large hall off the western end of the corridor stood beneath Diocletian's main reception room, while the cruciform group of chambers off the eastern end of the corridor stood beneath the triclinium, or dining room.
At the northern end of this basement area, imposing steps lead up and out into the Peristyle (Peristil), once the central courtyard of the palace complex, opening out from the point where the cardo and decumanus meet.These days it's a lively square and meeting point, crowded with cafe tables and surrounded by considerable remnants of the stately arches that once framed the courtyard. The Peristyle has been the site of two major cultural scandals in modern times, the first in 1968, when three students used the cover of darkness to paint the square's paving stones red – the colour of both revolutionary socialist idealism and the ossified political elites in socialist states such as Yugoslavia. The action, which became known as Red Peristyle, has gone down in history as one of the key events in Croatian conceptual art, although the authorities were quick to condemn it as vandalism. The thirtieth anniversary of Red Peristyle was marked on the night of January 10, 1998, when Igor Grubić painted a black circle in the centre of the Peristyle (black being the colour of the extreme right and, by implication, the Croatia of the 1990s) – a gesture which engendered much the same official response.
At the southern end of the Peristyle, steps lead up to the vestibule, a round, formerly domed building that is the only part of the imperial apartment area of the palace that's anything like complete. It was here that subjects would wait before being admitted to the presence of Diocletian himself.

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