The main feature of the city is the bell tower at the Cathedral of St Duje, which is within the walls of the ancient city. This inner city fortress was originally Diocletian’s Palace.
The side entrance to the palace through the ancient walls.
The main cathedral and bell tower of St. Duje. We toured the free park of the cathedral, but didn’t have the time or interest to go to the pay museum inside the wing of the cathedral.
The bell tower from a couple of different angles, it was a very photogenic landmark.
Beneath the palace were a series of catacombs, part of which serves as the main tourist entrance from the water side. In this space, it was set up as an underground market, but to either side was a museum.
We toured the museum, which actually had a lot of the engineering history of the buildings. Going into the detail of how these catacombs were used as cisterns, landfills, burial chambers, etc. Different rooms were built with different mortars and mortar ratios, causing some to still look perfect, while others were so structurally unsound we could not go in.
The museum did a great job putting lights around these chambers, lighting them up beautifully. (for photographers though, it was a mix of sodium vapor, halogen, CFL, and incandescent, which played hell with my white-balance)
The use of arches and sphere’s shows how engineering savvy that the Roman Empire was, especially 1800+ years ago.
This room has some original timbers that were found in the chambers. Even after nearly 2000 years in damp chambers, the wood was still intact.
The hypnotic circular pattern in the ceiling of a spherical chamber.
Another chamber where this arch and sphere construction method was employeed.
The other side of the museum. They are still working on chambers on this side, but provided a perspective drawings showing what it would look like if all the chambers were open.
The chambers opened up to a small courtyard, with the bell tower still in view.
These intersecting arch structures were impressive, I just think of the moment of hesitation the workers had as they began to pull down the supporting wooden structure hoping their work would hold.
After leaving the catacombs, we ventured around the rest of the ancient palace buildings. This acapella group was singing in one of the stone structures, capitalizing on the great acoustics. Watching how much money they were collecting per song, these guys had to be in the top grossing artists of all time, it was ridiculous how much money the tourists were giving them.
A view down one of the back alleys back towards the bell tower.
Some shots of the interior of the temple of Jupiter. Buildings are crammed so tight in this city, there were mere feet around this structure, making the line to get in here difficult to say the least.
Split is known for their cherry liquor, Maraschino, so we stopped in the small café for a cup of coffee and a taste of the maraschino. It would be the first of many ‘tastes’ of this liquor.
The back of the palace compound was a great public park. This was another small bell tower at church just outside the wall.
The statue of Grgur of Ninski, he defied the Roman aristocrats and the Pope by using the Croatian language in religious teachings. We nicknamed him merlin, which seemed much more appropriate.
One of the marble carvings on the side of the bell tower at the Cathedral of St. Duje.
We walked/staggered back to the cruise ship after running into the Scottish couple we sat with at dinner, sampling many local beers and maraschino on our way back to the ship. This was followed by some friendly wagering and arguing on who could do better on the ship’s rock climbing wall. After signing the waiver that we had not drank any alcoholic beverages in the past 4 hours, we kitted up and made our attempts to summit the wall of the Slendour of the Seas.
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