August 15 – Split, Croatia, Walking Tour

This morning we were met by Iris for a tour of Old Town Dubrovnik.  The city was first founded as a Greek colony.  The main part of the old city is the Palace of Diocletian, a Roman Emperor in the 4^rd century AD.  The palace is a mini-city with lots of narrow, windy streets.  

Because this part of Split was laid out by the Romans it has two main street that cross in the middle at the Peristyle Square.

And there were some dark Egyptian sphinxes on one of the walls in the square.

There was a beautiful bell tower at Peristyle Square. 

And there are four gates.  We are by the Silver Gate.

The gate closest to the harbor is the Bronze gate that opened out to the harbor area.  There were tons of people here as there are a lot of restaurant here taking advantage of the lovely breezes.

Next is the Iron gate (directly opposite the Silver Gate). 

And the inland gate, and largest and best preserved, is the Golden Gate. 

The Golden Gate came staffed with a couple of Roman Gladiators. 

There was also a statue of Grgur Ninsky, a catholic bishop from the area who introduced the Croatian language into the catholic mass.  He lived in the 10^th century and is something of a national hero.

The city walls appear to be pretty much intact.

Some of the sights we saw were the palace Vestibule.  This had been a round, domed room that was the main entrance to the central palace area.  The dome has collapsed so it now had a round opening to the sky.

The vestibule led to the Peristyle Square, the main square of the roman city.  And the place was crawling with tourists.

This area was the original residence of the emperor. 

After the Roman’s the Venetians took over Split for a few hundred years.  Just outside the Diocletian city walls is a large plaza from the period. 

 And nearby was the Republic Square that has a very Venetian feel to it.

This little square had a statue of Marko Marulic, a Croatian poet from the 15^th century.

In the afternoon we took the little sightseeing train for a ride along the coastline.  We had nice views of the water and surrounding islands,

a beach full of swimmers, 

and a pirate ship.

And we got a good view of Split from across the harbor as we came back into town.  

In the evening we did some more walking around.  The city is lovely a night when everything is lit up. 

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More Split
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