Split. Things to do, map and hidden gems

Diocletian's Palace is not a monument beside the city, it is the city: the emperor Diocletian had it built around the year 300 as a retirement residence with a military plan, a square fortress of some thirty thousand square metres with four gates and towers, and Split came into being when people moved in and never moved out. That is why there is no ticket and no opening hours here: through the Golden, Silver, Iron and Bronze gates one enters a living core in which some three thousand people still dwell, with laundry in the windows of ancient walls and cafés in imperial corridors. UNESCO inscribed the palace as World Heritage in 1979, as the best preserved late antique palace in the world. The best way to see it is to get lost: an hour without a plan through the lanes, and only then the Peristyle, the cathedral, the cellars and the Vestibule with intent. Come before nine or after six, when the cruise groups leave and the stone regains its colour; and at night, when the lighting fires the walls, the palace shows why Split calls it not a ruin but home.

The cathedral of St Domnius is history's greatest irony carved in stone: Diocletian, the last great persecutor of Christians, built himself a lavish mausoleum, and in it, for thirteen centuries now, has sat a cathedral dedicated to St Domnius, the bishop that very emperor had executed. The octagonal building with its ring of columns is the oldest cathedral structure in the world still serving its purpose: the imperial sarcophagus vanished, and around the ancient core settled a Romanesque pulpit, Gothic altars, Buvina's wooden doors of 1214 with twenty-eight scenes of Christ's life, and choir stalls among the oldest in Dalmatia. The belfry, built from the 13th to the 16th century and thoroughly restored around 1900, became Split's symbol: the climb to fifty-seven metres is by narrow stairs past open arches, but the view of palace, harbour and islands pays for every step. Tickets combine crypt, treasury and the temple of Jupiter; shoulders covered, the belfry queue is shortest in the morning. At the feast of Sudamja, around the seventh of May, the city sings to its Domnius beneath these same columns.

Klis is the key to Dalmatia: a fortress on bare rock in the saddle between Mosor and Kozjak, the only natural pass from the hinterland toward Split, for which this cliff was fought over for two millennia. Croatia's medieval rulers held court here, and Klis won its greatest legend in the 16th century, when captain Petar Kružić and his uskoks defied Ottoman power for decades; after the fall of 1537 the fortress was for a century the westernmost point of the Ottoman Empire, until Venice took it back in 1648. Today one climbs through three defensive rings to the top, where a view opens that explains all that blood: the whole of Split in the palm of the hand, islands to the horizon, and behind one's back the stone gate toward Bosnia. Series fans know Klis as Meereen from Game of Thrones. The fortress is reached by car or bus in some twenty minutes from the centre; count on ninety minutes of visit, firm shoes and the wind that always works here. It is loveliest before sunset, when the stone reddens and the city below begins to light up: then one best understands why nobody ever climbed down from this rock willingly.

The Vestibule is the antechamber of the imperial quarters and Split's most wondrous acoustic room: a circular hall whose dome lost its vault long ago, so today it looks through a round opening straight into the sky. This was the way in to the emperor from the Peristyle: visitors awaited audience in the rotunda, once clad in marble and mosaics, whose emptiness today is its strength: bare stone, perfect geometry and a circle of blue sky at the top. Thanks to the circle and the stone the Vestibule has an echo no concert hall can match: klapa groups sing here almost daily, a cappella male ensembles whose parts climb the walls and leave through the opening toward the sky; stand by the wall, close your eyes and you have the cheapest concert of the Mediterranean, for a coin or two in the hat. Through the Vestibule one passes toward the imperial apartments and the ethnographic museum, and every camera in town hunts the view through the opening: the cathedral's belfry peeks exactly through the circle's rim. It is quietest early in the morning, when slanted light enters through the opening and for a moment the hall looks as the emperor imagined it.

Varoš is Split before tourism: the old labourers' and fishermen's quarter climbing from the palace's western edge toward Marjan, a tangle of steep lanes, small stone houses with green shutters and courtyards where the vine makes the shade. Here lived those who fed the city, the fishermen of Matejuška and the field workers, and that modesty still reads in the scale: the houses are small, the streets as wide as a donkey needs, and the biggest buildings are chapels, among them St Nicholas, a Romanesque miniature of the 12th century hidden among the yards. Today Varoš is half living quarter, half stage set: beside grandmothers in the windows multiply apartments and konobas, but the spirit holds, especially in the morning, when the quarter smells of coffee and fried fish, and at evening, when the runners come back down from Marjan. Walk without a goal: from Šperun upward, then left and right as the lanes pull, to the first Marjan steps with the view of roofs and belfry. Ten minutes from the Riva, and another world: quieter, slower and much closer to the Split that once was.

The Kaštilac is the reason Kaštel Gomilica bears its name: a fortress on a rock in the sea that the Benedictine nuns of Split raised in 1529 to protect their field workers and their families from Ottoman raids. The nuns, who had owned land in the Kaštela field since the Middle Ages, built a square tower with a defensive wall on an islet joined to the mainland by a small stone bridge; within the walls a whole little settlement grew over time, house by house, which lives its calm life to this day. That makes the Kaštilac the most picturesque of all the castles of Kaštela: from the shore it reads like a stone ship anchored before the town, with washing stones and boats in the foreground, and through the gate on the bridge one enters courtyards where laundry dries and lunches perfume the air. Series fans will recognise the sets of Braavos from Game of Thrones. From Split you are some fifteen minutes by car or suburban bus; the visit takes half an hour, but the mood asks for at least an hour, with a swim by the bridge and a coffee on the little quay. Combine it with a walk along the Kaštela shore: seven towns, seven castles, and this one is the most photogenic.

Veliki Kabal is the roof of Mosor and the highest summit in Split's immediate hinterland: one thousand three hundred and thirty-nine metres of bare karst rising right behind the city quarters, close enough to be seen from the Riva, wild enough to make one forget on it that the sea exists. The ascent is a proper mountain tour: the classic starts from the village of Sitno Gornje via the Umberto Girometta mountain hut, on a marked path through maquis and then over stone slabs and karren, with four to five hours' walking both ways and a thousand metres of climb. The reward grows with every metre: underfoot the whole Split agglomeration and the islands from Šolta to Hvar, behind one's back the stone sea of the Zagora, and on the summit a wind which here, as local mountaineers say, never takes a day off. Mosor is karst without springs: carry three litres of water per person in summer, firm boots for the sharp stone and a checked forecast, for in bura or fog the ridge does not forgive. The loveliest seasons are spring and autumn; in summer start at dawn. For the fit, this is the greatest natural adventure Split offers without car or ferry.

Sustipan is Split's most elegant silence: a small peninsula high above the entrance to the city harbour, a park of cypresses and pines on the site of the early medieval Benedictine monastery of St Stephen, after which the cape is named. In the 19th century the city cemetery was laid out here with a neoclassical pavilion; in the fifties the cemetery was removed, and what remained is a park in which the plan of the alleys and the odd preserved slab still keep a ceremonial tone. Today Sustipan is the place to rest from the city: benches on the cliff with a view running from Marjan across the islands to the harbour, sailboats entering the ACI marina right below one's feet, newlyweds at their photographs, readers in the shade. The remains of the monastery and the small church of St Stephen stand in a corner of the park as a reminder of how old the place is. Come at sunset: the sun drops exactly into the passage between Čiovo and Šolta, the boats return to harbour, and the city behind slowly turns on its lights. Ten minutes' walk from the Riva, and the quietest ten minutes you will find in Split.

Marjan is the lungs of Split and its promise that the city will never be only stone: a hilly peninsular forest of three and a half kilometres closing the western horizon, with pines down to the sea, a way-of-the-cross of chapels along the southern cliffs and the Telegrin summit at a hundred and seventy-eight metres. Split people call it simply the hill, and half the city's sporting life happens on it: morning runners at the First Vidilica, cyclists on the forest roads, climbers on the crags above Kašjuni, swimmers on the beaches below the woods. Marjan is protected as a park forest and nothing is built on it, so today, as a hundred years ago, it is the place to flee the city without leaving it: ten minutes up the steps from Varoš and the noise of the Riva is exchanged for crickets. For a first meeting take the classic: the steps to Vidilica, coffee with a view, then the southern path past chapels and hermit caves to Bene and back along the shore. That is two to three hours' walk with swimming at will; whoever wants the summit turns off to Telegrin. Carry water and start before the heat: Marjan is loveliest while the city is still waking.

The Riva is Split's living room and the city's most important chamber, though it has neither walls nor roof: two hundred and fifty metres of promenade between the southern wall of Diocletian's Palace and the sea, with a double line of palms and sun falling on it from morning to dark. Its present shape came at the start of the 19th century under the French administration, which banked up a walk along the ancient wall; the white pergolas and the paving arrived with the great renewal of 2007, over which the city quarrelled as passionately as it only quarrels about the Riva. For the Riva is no ordinary promenade: one comes here to see and be seen, for the morning coffee that lasts till noon, for the evening stroll that is an institution, for welcoming athletes, for celebrations and protests. Cafés hold the whole line, prices run higher than one street deeper, but the payment is for the stage, since the chairs face the passers-by as if facing a play. The tourist advice is simple: one coffee on the Riva is as obligatory as the cathedral, best in the morning before ten, when the light falls on the palace and the city is only gathering speed. Everything else in Split begins and ends here.

The Meštrović Gallery is the house the greatest Croatian sculptor built for himself and then gave to everyone: a lavish villa with a garden on the southern slopes of Marjan, which Ivan Meštrović designed in the thirties as a family home and studio, with a view over the palms straight to the sea. History willed that he spend only a few years in it; he left into emigration, and donated the villa with hundreds of works to the people. Today it is the finest possible frame for his opus: marble and bronze figures in light-filled halls, monumental sculptures around the garden among the olives, drawings and family portraits in the more intimate rooms. Meštrović reads here chronologically and emotionally, from Viennese Secession to the religious cycles, and the space itself shows how the sculptor thought: house, garden and view are composed as one sculpture. The ticket also covers the Kaštelet a hundred metres on, the chapel with his wooden reliefs of the life of Christ, which many consider the peak of the opus. Count on ninety minutes for both, in the afternoon for the light in the garden; from the Riva it is half an hour's walk along the shore or a short drive.

Matejuška is the fishing soul of Split: a small harbour at the western end of the Riva, where Varoš touches the sea, with gajeta boats at their moorings, nets over the railings and huts where fishermen still keep their gear. For centuries those who fed the city with sardines set out from here, and Matejuška carries that working pedigree with pride: the monument to the fisherman on the pier is no tourist decoration but a thank-you. Today the little harbour lives a double life. By day it is a fishing port: nets are mended, boats are rummaged, the morning catch is sold. By evening it becomes the most democratic gathering place in town: on the big concrete pier that everyone calls the breakwater sit students, workers, tourists and guitars, with shop beer and legs over the sea, for Matejuška has long been Split's unofficial answer to expensive bars, the place where sunset and company cost nothing. Buy a beer or a juice, sit on the concrete among the others and watch the sun drop behind Marjan while the lights of the Riva come on one by one. If you want to understand how Split breathes when it is selling nothing to anyone, you will see it here.

The Ribarnica is Split's morning opera: a Secession hall by Marmontova from the 1890s, in which every morning the catch is laid out on marble counters, sardines and anchovies in silver heaps, gilthead and sea bass, squid, scampi, sometimes a tuna around which half the market gathers. The saleswomen call out, buyers check gills, prices are written in chalk and change as the morning advances; the folklore is loud, honest and entirely unacted, for this is no attraction for tourists but the service of a city that eats fish daily. The most famous chronicle of the Ribarnica are its flies, more precisely their absence: sulphurous thermal waters spring up beside the hall, whose smell, as Split people love to say, drives flies away better than any chemistry. The best time is from seven to ten, when the choice is complete; on Mondays the catch is thinnest, for the fleet rests on Sunday. If you have a kitchen, buy sardines and ask advice on preparation, you will receive it in three voices; if you have none, come just to watch. Half an hour of the Ribarnica counts as a lesson in Mediterranean eating, free of charge and scented with the sea.

Marmontova is Split's fashion runway: a straight pedestrian street leading north from the Riva, broad, paved and framed by shop windows, the only street in old Split built to a plan and a rule. It bears the name of the French marshal Marmont, governor of Dalmatia under Napoleon, who at the start of the 19th century left the city more good than many before him: he tore down the ramparts that were choking the town, built roads and introduced urbanism, so Split, a rarity for an occupier, left his name on its finest street. Today Marmontova is border and connector at once: east of it begins the stone labyrinth of the old town, west of it the bourgeois Split of the 19th century with the Prokurative. One strolls the street as one strolls the Riva, the windows hold local and world brands, and at its northern end the street exits at the fish market, where the fashion runway ends with the most honest content possible: fresh fish on ice. Walk Marmontova in the evening, when the windows light up and the stone shines: this is Split in its bourgeois edition, tidy, bright and proud of the line that keeps it straight.

The Mall of Split is the city's largest shopping centre: a bright house in Split's north with international fashion chains, a large supermarket, a food court and cinema halls under one roof. This is the address for days when a holiday needs the city instead of the beach: when the bura upends ferry times, when rain cancels swimming, when children need an hour of air-conditioning and pizza, or when the big pre-departure shop is done, for prices are the same as in the rest of the country, without island surcharges. The layout is simple and clear: wide corridors, lifts and ramps for prams, hundreds of free parking places, so even with a full car and children everything is managed without stress. The cinema in the evening shows films mostly in the original with subtitles, which makes it usable for guests too. From the centre you are ten minutes by car or city bus; on foot it does not pay, this is a ride. The tourist role of the Mall of Split is clear and honourable: the backup plan that always works, with hours into the late evening and Sundays in season.

The Pazar is the belly of Split: the green market that spreads every morning along the eastern wall of Diocletian's Palace, around the Silver Gate, on ground where trade has run for as long as the city has stood. The stalls compose into rows of fruit, vegetables, cheese, prosciutto, olives and flowers, along the edges also clothes, bags and all that indescribable rest that makes a real market a market; above everything the gulls, keeping order in their own way. This is the exchange of the Dalmatian season: cherries and apricots in June, tomatoes that perfume half the square in July, figs, grapes and the first mandarins from the Neretva valley in autumn. Bargaining is moderately allowed, tasting offers itself, and cash remains the main language. The Pazar is liveliest from seven to eleven; around noon the stalls slowly fold, and by two only the skeleton remains. Come with an empty bag and a beach plan: figs, cheese, tomatoes and bread from the nearby bakery compose into a lunch worthy of a konoba. And watch: at the Pazar, half an hour shows how Split truly lives, who with whom, what is eaten and what is talked about.