Split, Croatia

• 1. Introduction

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  Split sits on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, and at its heart is a Roman emperor's retirement home that became a city. Diocletian began building his palace in 293 CE, selecting a site near his home town of Salona. More than seventeen centuries later, people still live and work inside those ancient walls. The city today holds over 160,000 residents and draws more than a million visitors a year to what the United Nations designated a World Heritage Site in 1979. How did a fortified palace transform into the second-largest city in Croatia? Why did a civilization of refugees choose those walls over anywhere else? And what does it mean for a city to carry that much history without being crushed by it?

• 2. Before the Palace

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  Aspálathos was already centuries old by the time Diocletian chose it as a building site. Greek settlers from the island of Issa founded the colony, and Issa itself was a colony of the Sicilian city of Syracuse, making Split a colony of a colony. The exact founding date is unknown, but scholars estimate it somewhere in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE. The settlement lived off trade with the surrounding Illyrian tribes, mainly the Delmatae. Nearby Salona grew far more prominent after the Illyrian Wars of 229 and 219 BCE, becoming the capital of the Roman Province of Dalmatia and eventually a city of around 60,000 people. For a stretch of centuries, the story of Spálathos is almost invisible in the historical record, eclipsed by its larger neighbor. That relationship would reverse in a dramatic way around 650 CE, when Salona ceased to exist and Split inherited its legacy.

• 3. Refugees in a Palace

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  Diocletian's Palace was built as a massive structure, much like a Roman military fortress, and at its peak it housed a population as large as 8,000 to 10,000 people. Between 475 and 480, it sheltered Flavius Julius Nepos, the last recognized Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Then, in 639, the Pannonian Avars sacked and destroyed Salona. Survivors fled to the nearby islands. The Salonitans regrouped and, in 650, reclaimed the land under Severus the Great. They moved into the 300-year-old palace, which the Slavic tribes of the mainland could not effectively besiege. Emperor Constans II granted them an imperial mandate to establish themselves there as the City of Spalatum. The Temple of Jupiter was converted to honor the Virgin Mary, and the remains of Saint Domnius, retrieved from the ruins of Salona, formed the foundation of a new cathedral. The city that grew from those ruins became a Byzantine duchy, administered first by the Exarchate of Ravenna and later by Zadar, until the Sack of Constantinople altered the political map entirely.

• 4. Between Venice and Croatia

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  For much of the Middle Ages, Split was a city that powerful neighbors wanted but could never hold for long. In 998, the Venetian Doge Pietro II Orseolo led a naval expedition that defeated the Narentines and, with permission from Emperor Basil II, proclaimed himself Duke of Dalmatia. In 1069, Peter Krešimir IV, King of Croatia, gained control over the Dalmatian cities including Split, stretching his rule south to the Neretva. After the death of Croatian King Stephen II in 1091, King Coloman of Hungary conquered the Kingdom of Croatia and besieged Zadar. Split and the nearby city of Trogir agreed to submit, receiving in return a guarantee of their ancient privileges: no tribute, the right to choose their own count and archbishop, preserved Roman laws, and a rule that no foreigner could live within the walls against the will of the citizens. Those rights were generally upheld by Hungarian kings, though violations did occur. The back-and-forth was relentless. Venetian doge Ordelafo Faliero retook the Dalmatian cities after Coloman's death in 1116, only to be defeated and killed in battle with the Hungarians in 1117. By 1141, King Geza II marched on Split and Trogir, both accepting him as overlord in what proved to be a conquest that lasted 186 years before Venice returned. In 1409, the losing claimant to the Hungarian throne, Ladislaus of Naples, sold his disputed rights on Dalmatia to the Venetian Republic for 100,000 ducats. Venice took formal control of the city by 1420.

• 5. Marulić and the Venetian City

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  Venetian Split was a city of trade and reduced autonomy. The highest authority was a prince and captain assigned by Venice, and the illiteracy rate was extremely high, mostly because Venetian rule showed little interest in educational and medical facilities. Yet the city produced Marko Marulić, the Croatian national poet, who was born in Split in 1450. His most acclaimed work, Judita, written in Split in 1501 and printed in Venice in 1521, was an epic poem about the biblical figures of Judith and Holofernes. It is widely held to be the first modern work of Croatian literature. Split had also become a significant port, with trade routes running to Ottoman-held territory through the Klis pass. By the time Venice fell to Napoleon, the city had spent centuries as a fortified outpost on the Ottoman frontier, its hinterland not recovered from Ottoman control until the Morean War of 1699. The Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797 transferred the city to the Habsburg monarchy.

• 6. Name and Language

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  The name Aspálathos may derive from the spiny broom plant, Calicotome spinosa. After the Roman conquest it became Spalatum or Aspalatum in Latin, evolving through the Middle Ages into forms including Spalatro in the Dalmatian Romance language of the city's population. The Venetian name Spalato became official under Venetian rule and remains the name of the city in Italian. From the 10th century onward, local usage shifted toward Spaleto, which through a chain of phonetic changes produced the South Slavic forms: ekavian Splet, ijekavian Spljet, and ikavian Split. Following the Illyrian movement and its recognition by the Habsburg Monarchy in the 19th century, the Croatian names gained prominence. The city council made the decision official in 1910, when Split formally replaced Spljet. A long-standing theory had connected the name to the Latin word for palace, palatium, even producing the notion that it derived from S. Palatium, short for Salonae Palatium. That etymology was notably propagated by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus and later repeated by Thomas the Archdeacon. The source is direct on the point: the city is several centuries older than the palace.

• 7. War and Resistance

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  In April 1941, following the invasion of Yugoslavia by Nazi Germany, Italy occupied Split and formally annexed it on the 18th of May 1941 under the Treaties of Rome, making it part of the province of Spalato. The Italian Governatorate of Dalmatia held 390,000 inhabitants, of which 280,000 were Croats, 90,000 Serbs, and 5,000 Dalmatian Italians. The first armed resistance group in the city was organized on the 7th of May 1941. By September and October 1941 alone, ten officials of the Italian fascist occupation had been assassinated by citizens. On the 12th of June 1942, a fascist mob attacked the city's synagogue, destroying its library and archive and beating worshippers as they left. Football clubs HNK Hajduk and RNK Split suspended their activities and joined the Partisans with their entire staff after Italy capitulated. Hajduk became the official football club of the Partisan movement. After the Italian capitulation in September 1943, thousands of people volunteered to join Tito's brigades, reportedly a third of the total population. The Partisans finally captured the city on the 26th of October 1944, instituting it as the provisional capital of Croatia. Three German generals, Policardi, Pelligra, and Cigala Fulgosi, were among those executed in what became known as the Trelj massacre.

• 8. Sport and the City's Identity

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  HNK Hajduk was founded in 1911 as the first Croatian football club in Dalmatia, and its supporters' group Torcida Split, estimated to date from 1950, is considered the oldest fan group in Europe. The Poljud Stadium holds around 35,000 spectators. Among the footballers who began their careers at Hajduk are Slaven Bilic, Aljosa Asanovic, Igor Tudor, Robert Jarni, and Stipe Pletikosa. Basketball club KK Split won the EuroLeague three consecutive times from 1989 to 1991, with players Toni Kukoc and Dino Rada, both Split natives, as key contributors. Goran Ivanisevic, born in Split in 1971, won Wimbledon in 2001 and is a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Swimmer Durdica Bjedov won an Olympic gold medal and set an Olympic record in the 100 metre breaststroke in 1968. The traditional sport of picigin, played in ankle-deep water on Bačvice beach since 1908, involves five players keeping a small ball from touching the water. There is a tradition of playing picigin on New Year's Day regardless of the weather. Among the musicians who shaped Croatian popular culture, Oliver Dragojevic was the only Croatian artist who sold out Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, L'Olympia, and the Sydney Opera House.