Split Intact

I don’t know why they call it Split. It seems in one piece to me. Yeah, yeah. I know. That’s a pathetically obvious groaner of a line that struggles and fails to achieve jokehood. But it’s all I have. Sorry. If you feel you must, go ahead and complain to the proprietor.

I arrived in Split, Croatia about a half hour before noon on a ferry from Hvar, checked into my hotel, went for a brief wander, mainly in the old town, and had some lunch.

I ate at a nice little restaurant in a small, surprisingly secluded square in the middle of Split’s old town. Four- or five-storey, old buildings, constructed mostly of off-white, currently clean stone blocks frame the four sides of the square.

I had a tasty Mediterranean salad with seafood, a hard-boiled egg, and “masculine lettuce.” That’s what the menu called it, masculine lettuce. I don’t know what makes it masculine. I honestly can’t tell the difference between feminine and masculine lettuce. Maybe I’ve achieved an enlightened state of gender blindness.

For your future reference, masculine lettuce looks and tastes surprisingly similar to the greens and red-purples in a mesclun salad. Now you know.

Liquids at lunch included wine, sparkling water, and an espresso.

Wandering Old Town Split and the Riva

A few paragraphs ago I mentioned the surprisingly secluded square and its surrounding clean stone buildings. I did some wandering through the old town before lunch and, based on that, those two qualities, particularly “secluded,” were pleasantly surprising.

In my wandering before lunch, the old town was jam-packed. The same was true in Dubrovnik’s old town when I was there. So I guess people love old towns. But maybe I’m projecting. I’m a person. I love old towns. Now that we’ve established that, please tell all of those other people to go away.

Most of the buildings that I saw in the old town before lunch are a touch on the gritty side, with considerable time between now and their last cleaning. That’s not an insult. It contributes to a real-world, lived-in character that I appreciate. But, polished it’s not. So the cleanliness of the buildings around the square where I had lunch was pleasing.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t report that in my wanderings after lunch I found some lanes, or rather a warren of lanes, with building facades that looked like they’d been cleaned some time within the past several decades. They weren’t as clean as the ones around the square, but they were cleaner than most of the ones I saw before lunch.

I should say that when I said “gritty” above I didn’t mean littered. I haven’t seen any litter here yet, despite the hordes.

The old town has more squares the size of the one I had lunch in, as well as some larger ones.

In general, I like the old town. It’s not as polished as Dubrovnik’s, but it has character.

The Riva

Officially known in English as the “Croatian National Revival Embankment,” The Riva is a long, palm-lined promenade along much of Split’s seafront. It runs by a marina at one end and Split’s passenger port at the other. In between, it passes by a section of open sea.

There are several benches on the Riva and a lot of people strolling, sitting, and enjoying the promenade and benches.

Split’s port is very much busier than Dubrovnik’s port. Today, and I imagine most days, several ferries, including the one I arrived on, came and went. Smallish cruise ships parked in the same configuration as the ones I described in Hvar yesterday. A gargantuan cruise ship docked at a more distant pier. And a giant cruise ship docked just ahead of it at the same pier. The giant cruise ship was probably about half the size of the gargantuan one, but it was still no doubt large enough to carry a devastating viral load.

When you read the last paragraph in this section, i.e., two paragraphs hence, you will probably say to yourself, or maybe to a loved one nearby, “Why the heck did Joel put this paragraph here rather than at the top of the section on roaming the old town? It is a natural introduction to that. What a jerk he is.”

Well, smart aleck, hold off on the criticism. I did it to provide a segue to the next section. If you weren’t so quick to criticize, you would have realized that immediately on getting into the following section. Then you would have saved yourself the embarrassment of uttering needless, cruel criticisms.

Here it is. Back in the Roman times, Roman emperor (284-305 CE) Diocletian built himself a large retirement palace in what is now Split, then called Salona, the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia. The remains of the palace are now incorporated into Split’s old town. The space where the palace compound used to be forms a large chunk of it, with its lanes running through it. Some of the buildings in the palace were put to other purposes, including the Cathedral of St. Domnius. Ta-da. A segue.

Cathedral of St. Domnius in Split, Et. Al.

In the fourth century, the Romans built an elaborate mausoleum for the deceased ex-emperor Diocletian. After the fall of Rome, the Catholics of Split needed a Cathedral. The mausoleum became the cathedral. Isn’t that always the way? The Romans fall and the church kicks them when they’re down and does away with their mausoleum. What’s a deceased emperor of an extinct empire to do?

Then again, Diocletian was not especially nice to Christians. He persecuted them with extreme prejudice. He was the dude who ordered the execution of the guy who became sainted as St. Domnius. So, maybe justice was indeed done by turning his mausoleum into the Cathedral of St. Domnius.

The Cathedral of St. Domnius in Split is one of the busiest cathedrals I’ve seen, both in terms of visitors to it and the decorations and religious items crowding it. However, I mean busy per cubic metre. It’s busy only because it’s probably the smallest cathedral I’ve seen. There’s not much space to cram people and stuff into. The cathedral is not all that much larger than the living/dining room of a typical North American upper-middle-class home.

If it were instead the size of one of the large cathedrals of the world, say, the Milan Duomo, it would appear almost empty with the same amount of people and stuff.

I won’t describe the people because individuals come and go. I was one of them. And I’m indescribable, but not in a good way.

The stuff includes the sarcophagus of St. Domnius on one side of the main altar. On the other side of the main altar, a reliquary containing his relics sits above a stone relief of him lying in a reposed position.

Above the altar, gold-coloured angels hold fancy schmancy chains holding lamps.

The cathedral also features paintings and an elaborate pulpit.

Four other buildings are associated with the cathedral, the treasury, the bell tower, a crypt, and the baptistry. The ticket office sells five different combo tickets depending on which buildings you want to visit. I bought the one that got me into all of them.

The Treasury

The Treasury sits right across a small square from the Cathedral. It contains the usual collection of cathedral treasury items: chalices, crucifixes, reliquaries, vestments, religious paintings, and the like.

Also in the religious vein, the treasury displays a couple of decorated Psalterium Romanum (is the plural Psalteria Romana?) from the 15th century.

No, I didn’t know what a Psalterium is. I had to look it up. If Wikipedia is correct, it’s a book of Psalms. Sounds right.

In addition to the religious items, there are also some archaeological finds such as architectural elements and mosaic tiles.

The Bell Tower

The bell tower, which is immediately beside the cathedral, was added some centuries later. There are 180 steps to the top. I didn’t count them. That’s what the sign at the tower said. I took their word for it.

“180 steps,” I thought, “phht. I’ve climbed towers with a lot more steps than that. I might not be as young as I used to be, but that’ll be a breeze.”

What the sign didn’t say is the risers of the stairs in the lower portion of the tower are some of the highest manufactured steps I’ve ever seen. Sure, I’ve climbed hills where they carved steps out of rocks wherever the rocks naturally occurred on the hills. Some of those necessarily had more than the normal height between steps.

But why would anyone intentionally make risers that high? They are probably about twice the height of a normal residential stair riser, or close to it.

The upper portion of the tower has a metal staircase with normal-height risers. Yay.

The views from the top rewarded me for the climb. Vistas included the harbour (including the giant cruise ship and the gargantuan cruise ship), the city, and the topology behind the city.

St. Lucy’s Crypt

Tourism drives so many places here. More than a few signs have only one language on them, and if it’s at a tourist attraction, that language is English.

“St. Lucy’s Crypt.” That’s what the sign pointing to the crypt entrance said.

I thought, “Yes! It’s long past time that a Peanuts character was sainted. Although, after all of the times she pulled the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second and all of the times she offered medical advice without a licence, I’m not sure Lucy was the one who most deserved it. But, still. I’m glad the church beatified one of them.”

Wait. What? Apparently, it’s not that Lucy. I read elsewhere it’s the one Italians call Santa Lucia. My mistake. Sorry.

The crypt is a small, underground, generally cylindrical building with a domed roof and niches around the circumference of the cylinder. In one of the niches is a colourful statue of Lucy. (Santa Lucia, not Peanut’s Lucy.)

In the center of the crypt is a shallow freshwater well. Santa Lucia was considered the patron saint of eyesight. People back in the day believed that washing your eyes with the water from the well was good for your sight. So they did.

Today, a grate prevents scooping up the water. But modern-day visitors apparently think that throwing their hard-earned coins into the well offers some advantage. Go figure.

I didn’t see anything in the crypt that looked like a sarcophagus or tomb, so I don’t know why it deserves to be called a crypt, rather than, say, a shrine. Maybe they buried bodies somewhere that’s not apparent.

St. John’s Baptistry

In Roman times, what is now St. John’s Baptistry was Jupiter’s Temple. Today, it’s a small, raw stone-block building, with a baptismal font at its centre. Relief carvings decorate the base of the font.

A statue of St. John stands against the back wall. One of St. John’s arms is crooked, with his forearm raised and his fingers lifted as if he is saying, “What? What do you people want from me? Go do something useful and leave me alone.” But the sculptor probably had something else in mind.

That’s it for today. Join me again tomorrow as I explore more of Split.