The star bastions
Projecting angles giving mutual covering fire.
putnik โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท putnik โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Kaiser87 โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท SchiDD โ CC BY-SA 4.0
A long war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire from 1645 to 1669 centred on Crete. Its fighting spread to the Dalmatian coast, and Ottoman forces came close to Split from inland by way of Klis. That is why Gripe was built quickly on the eastern hill: without it, any army holding that hill could have bombarded the city from above. The fortress was never tested in a major battle, but it changed an attacker's arithmetic.
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Gripe is a seventeenth-century Venetian military work on a rise east of the old town, built in haste during the Cretan War with the Ottomans when the danger came close to Split itself โ one of the few examples of a complete Venetian fortification outside the city walls. The design is of the star fort type: low thick walls with bastions projecting at the corners so that fire can cover the adjacent faces โ the same logic you see in Zadar's walls, but in a free-standing work on high ground. The fortress today houses the Croatian Maritime Museum, which makes the visit doubly useful: a collection on navigation in the Adriatic since antiquity, with ship models, charts, navigational instruments and torpedoes โ Split and Rijeka both had a part in the torpedo's development in the nineteenth century. The site is elevated, so the view over the city and harbour is good.
Projecting angles giving mutual covering fire.
Split and Rijeka in the torpedo's history.
Glagoljasa 18, 21000 Split