Jewish Cemetery, Fine Art, Wandering

Tomorrow morning, if all goes according to plan, I will pick up a rental car for a few days and split Split, Croatia.

Oh, joy. Oh, bliss I am so looking forward to the rental car. I so love driving.

(Italics is the closest I could think of to a sarcasm font.)

This afternoon, I rounded out my time in Split by walking through Split’s old Jewish Cemetery, visiting the Split Gallery of Fine Arts, and doing some more wandering around, mostly in the old town.

Old Jewish Cemetery

The walking tour app I use recommended visiting the old Jewish Cemetery, as did the woman at the Split Synagogue this morning. So, I did.

Some of the graves near the base of the old Jewish Cemetery
Some of the graves near the base of the old Jewish Cemetery

The old Jewish Cemetery rests part way up the side of the mountain that forms the Marjan Peninsula. A stone wall roughly my height surrounds it. I walked around the exterior of that stone wall. There are just two small entrances through the wall. At one, on the side of the wall facing toward the ocean, the gate was closed and locked with a thick chain and padlock.

The other entrance is at the base of the cemetery, in the wall facing the central part of Split. I walked right past it almost as soon as I got to the walled-in area because that entrance was close to the side of a café. I assumed it provided access to the back of the café. That’s why I ended up walking the full exterior perimeter of the wall to find the entrance. It was only after I got back to the starting point that I decided to explore the small front entrance beside the café and found the cemetery.

The old Jewish Cemetery is indeed old. It was founded in 1573 and now contains more than 700 graves. And that’s probably all it will ever hold. The last burial was in 1945, when the cemetery was closed to new burials and declared a national monument.

Many of the graves are marked with gravestones lying flat against the slope of the hill, or angled slightly higher than the slope of the hill. Some burial plots look like above-ground tombs. Only a couple of the graves, up at the top of the cemetery on a bit of a levelled-off portion, have upright tombstones.

Graves farther up the old Jewish Cemetery
Graves farther up the old Jewish Cemetery

As I write that, I fear that one or more readers might interpret “only a couple of the graves … have upright tombstones” as meaning that the others were knocked down by vandals. That is not what I meant. Flush or almost flush gravestones were clearly the custom at that cemetery at that time.

I walked around the old Jewish Cemetery quite a bit. I saw a lot of graves. All of the ones I saw—every single one of them—had at least one stone on the gravestone. Most had at least a few. Some had what looked like dozens.

Think about that. The last burial was in 1945. That means that exceptionally few, if any, people alive today have any living memory of any of the deceased. Yet people came to pay their respects, even to some people who died centuries before they were born, with the traditional Jewish grave custom.

Although, a thought just came to me. The Hamas terrorist attack on Israel occurred only a couple of days ago. I imagine there is some chance that people placed the stones only recently, less out of respect for the deceased buried in the cemetery than as in solidarity with mourners in Israel. I didn’t hear that anywhere. The hypothesis came to me out of the blue. So I have no idea whatsoever if there’s a shred of truth to it. Maybe there are always stones placed on the tombstones at the old Jewish Cemetery by the local Jewish community. But I could believe either theory.

Split Gallery of Fine Arts

Entrance to the Split Gallery of Fine Arts
Entrance to the Split Gallery of Fine Arts

The Split Gallery of Fine Arts is a mid-sized gallery just outside the old town walls. It’s also a rather disorienting place, housed in a building that used to be a hospital. The gallery carves the floor plan of the upper of its two floors (two including the ground floor), where the permanent exhibits are, into a series of spaces that resemble a jigsaw puzzle, except with only straight edges rather than mostly curved. My most ardent reader knows well how much I struggle with jigsaw puzzles.

I tried to view all the spaces. The gallery is not that big. But I have no doubt I inadvertently missed some.

The collection at the Split Gallery of Fine Arts spans a period from the 14th century (just a couple of works that I saw) up to the late 20th century. I didn’t do a count, but I’m quite certain that the 20th century makes up the vast majority of the displayed collection.

Most of the works are oil on canvas paintings, but it also displays some tempera on wood and acrylic on canvas paintings.

Inside the Split Gallery of Fine Arts
Inside the Split Gallery of Fine Arts

There are also many sculptures. Bronze is the dominant material for them, but some are made of wood, alabaster, or marble.

In addition to the ticket desk, café, and washrooms there, the ground floor held a temporary exhibit. Most of the pieces there were very modern, including some abstracts of the sort that plebs like me aren’t supposed to be able to interpret. And I couldn’t.

The ground floor also contained a small, darkened room. A film ran on a screen at the front. When I entered, I saw a black and white silent film with a man seated in a chair smoking a cigaret and staring out a window. After a while he got up, still smoking, went to the window, and stared out some more.

The film then cut to a series of outdoor scenes too diverse to possibly be visible from a single window. It started with two rocks in an unknown body of water, then some trees, then I forget what else. I seem to recall the film returning to the man, but I might be misremembering. After that ran for a bit, a credit came up, including the year 1962.

The film then moved on to a series of patterns playing out on, as best as I can guess, the surface of some water over a black base. That had a soundtrack that someone well-versed in musical genres could probably describe. But that’s not me. I left shortly after that.

I probably forgot a number of the more boring parts of the film, but that’s the gist of what played while I watched. Um. Okay.

Wandering Around

During the afternoon and after visiting the art gallery, I did some more wandering around. In my roaming, I saw some things I saw before, some that I walked past multiple times but didn’t pay much attention to, and others that I saw for the first time.

Gregory

Gregory
Gregory

One sight that’s impossible to miss if you walk by it because it’s so huge is the giant statue of Gregory of Nin, the Bishop of Nin in 926 CE, also known as Grigur Ninski. He looms over one of the gates to the old town, just across a small square from the gate.

A relaxing, small park sits behind Gregory.

I saw him several times while in Split, but I didn’t mention him before. So I’m mentioning him now.

Apparently, people think that rubbing Gregory’s big toe brings good luck. His big toe is a bright, shiny, polished bronze colour. Heavy green patina covers the rest of him.

Yeah, whatever. I guess I’m not going to have good luck. I didn’t contribute to the toe polishing. Then again, considering I’m here enjoying myself and I’ve had amazing weather so far, I don’t think I need the beneficent kismet of his big toe. (Excuse me for a minute while I scan the sky for any lightning bolts headed my way.)

Fountains

The Pirja Fountain
The Pirja Fountain

Split has many decorative fountains, some are mundane, some are attractive, some are interesting, and one is fascinating

The latter is Pirja Fountain, also known as Figa i Pirija.

A pipe juts out a bit beyond the stone wall of a building, about, I think, a little above the top of a high-ceilinged ground floor. A little ways back from the building, in a small public square, sits a metal sculpture of a funnel. A jet of water streams out of the pipe, arcs through the air, and lands into the centre of the top of the funnel.

I can’t imagine how long it took them to adjust the pressure such that the water lands perfectly. Nor do I have any idea how they can maintain the correct pressure throughout the day. I saw it on a calm day. Wind might spoil the effect. I don’t know.

Streets and Structures

Another interesting fountain in Split
Another interesting fountain in Split

A lot of my wandering took me through many of the streets of the old town. I’m not sure I saw anything there that I hadn’t already seen before. But it was worth it.

I love European old towns. Split’s ranks high among them.


Because I’ll be picking up a rental car tomorrow morning and driving to my next destination, about two and a half to three hours away, I almost certainly won’t post an entry tomorrow morning. Although, if the drive is even more harrowing than normal, maybe I’ll calm my nerves by writing about it before going out and doing anything.


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