The bell tower
The palace grid entire, mountain to sea.
Sumitsurai — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Mattias Hill — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Samouraj — CC BY-SA 4.0 · FOTO:Fortepan — ID 100695: Adományozó/Donor: Dobóczi Zsolt. — CC BY-SA 3.0
St. Domnius is history's quiet revenge: the mausoleum of Diocletian — the Christians' fiercest persecutor — become his martyrs' cathedral: the emperor's body cast out and replaced by Domnius, whom he had personally executed, the domed Roman octagon working as church since the seventh century unbroken: the world's oldest cathedral building in use, uncontested. Inside are layers: Diocletian's and his wife's portrait frieze still circles the dome (staring eternally at their purpose's opposite) — the carved wooden doors (1214) with their twenty-eight Gospel scenes a Romanesque summit — and the slender bell tower (57m), Split's symbol, climbs its open stair to the greatest angle: the palace as complete grid below, between mountain and sea. Facing it, Jupiter's Temple turned baptistery: another sphinx, beheaded, at its door (the Christians decapitated the pagan) and its coffered vault the completest small Roman ceiling left. Tickets run in combos — and the tower before noon is kinder in stair and crowd.
The palace grid entire, mountain to sea.
The Gospel in twenty-eight wooden scenes.
The completest Roman ceiling, the beheaded sphinx.
Ul. Kraj Svetog Duje, 21000 Split
The PeristyleThe Peristyle is the central court of Diocletian's Palace: a rectangular space e1 minute walk4.3
The Imperial TricliniumA hall in the substructures of Diocletian's Palace known as the triclinium — the1 minute walk4.5
The Silver Gate and Eastern WallThe eastern gate of Diocletian's Palace and the wall it stands in, at the end ov1 minute walk4.6
The Brass GateThe southern gate of Diocletian's Palace in Split, and the smallest and plainest1 minute walk4.4
Marulić PalaceA historic house in old Split associated with the Marulić family, which produced1 minute walk4.4Bishop of neighbouring Salona, executed by Diocletian in the great persecution of 304 — and when history turned, the Christians moved his relics into his killer's own mausoleum and cast the emperor out: no completer poetic justice stands in one building. His feast (7 May) is Split's greatest day still.