Six Reasons You Should Go to Split, Croatia
This little city won me over big.
I didn’t particularly want to go to Split, Croatia.
Michael and I had been there before — briefly, as a stop on a cruise ship — and I remembered it as being fine, very pretty, but it didn’t exactly knock my socks off. Plus, when we were deciding whether to go to Split again, we’d just spent six months exploring amazing, world-class cities like Istanbul, Budapest, Vienna, and Prague.
Did we really want to spend the winter in this dinky little town on the Adriatic that we’d already seen?
But we were looking for a place to rendezvous with an old nomad friend, and, uh, none of our alternative destinations were quite working out.
So Split it was.
Spoiler alert: the city completely won me over. It’s an incredible place to stay — for a week, or even three months, like Michael and I just did.
Here are six reasons why you might enjoy it too.
Diocletian’s Palace and Old Town
The centerpiece of Split is the retirement palace of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, begun around 295 AD and completed in 305.
As an emperor, Diocletian was a mixed bag. Sure, he reformed and stabilized the empire and was the first emperor in the history of the Republic to voluntarily retire — but after he did so, the empire collapsed into decades of bloody civil war. During his reign, he also oversaw the widespread and vicious persecution of Christians.
His retirement palace is nonetheless spectacular — the world’s best preserved example of a Roman palace and a UNESCO World Heritage Monument.
And it is right in the middle of town!
In fact, the palace literally segues into Split’s Old Town, and the entire area is now a maze-like warren of ancient corridors and stone plazas that house a seemingly endless number of shops, restaurants, museums, markets, and apartments.
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