Diocletian's Palace is the ancient palace of Emperor Diocletian in Split. It was built around 300 by the Roman emperor Diocletian and resided in it after his accession to the throne (305) until his death (316). It was built in the bay of the peninsula 5 km southwest of Salona, the capital of the province of Dalmatia. Today, the remains of the palace are part of the historic core of the city of Split, which was inscribed on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites in Europe in 1979.
Measuring 215 m by 181 m with a walls 26 m high this palace is a marvel of the architecture of the late Roman Empire. Building material came from Egypt, Greece, Italy and other corners of the Mediterranean sea. No expanses were spared for the official residence of the emperor. In all it took 10 years to build the whole complex. The palace looked like a city within a city with four gates. Northern gate was called Golden Gate, south was called Bronze gate, eastern- Silver gate and western gate was called the Iron gate.
The south part of the palace that house emperor' headquarters, temples and other important administrative houses were separate by Krešimirovaroad also known as Decumanus that ran from west to east from the northern part of the palace. It housed servants and personal guard. Diocletian used this place as a place for residence after his voluntary abdication on May 1 305 AD. It is the first such act by the Roman emperor in the analogues of the empire's history. The legend states that after things started to fall apart at the absence of the strong ruler delegates came from Rome begging Diocletian to return. The respond stunned them. Emperor told them: "if you saw the cabbage that I grow here you wouldn't ask me to come back". It is one of the few examples in World history than a leader quits at the height of his power without pressure or circumstances.
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Diocletian and Christianity.
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Based on data from a Roman map,
known for its medieval outline ("Tabula Peutingeriana"), there was
already a settlement called Spalatum in that bay, the remains and
size of which have not been determined to this day. The beginning of
the construction of Diocletian's Palace has not been determined
exactly. It is assumed that this was around the year 295, after the
introduction of the tetrarchy (rule of four). However, ten years
after that decision, when Diocletian abdicated in 305, the palace
had not yet been completed, and there are indications that some work
was going on while the emperor was staying in it. It is not known
according to whose architectural idea the palace was built and who
its builders were.
However, the engraved Greek names Zotikos
and Filotas, as well as numerous engraved Greek letters indicate
that a certain number of builders were originally from the eastern
part of the empire, i.e. that Diocletian brought with him masters
from the East. Nevertheless, it is very likely that a large part of
the workforce was of local origin. The basic material came from
close range. White limestone was brought from Brač and some from
Seget near Trogir; travertine was extracted from the bed of nearby
rivers, and bricks were made in Salonitan and other workshops
located nearby. The building as a whole did not have a direct role
model in Roman architecture until then. Its originality derives from
its basic function and adaptation to position.
Its shape resembles a castrum - a military camp. The outer walls are
almost rectangular, measuring 175-181 x 216 m, and the towers at the
corners of the palace follow the tradition of military architecture.
Since the palace was 6 km away from the nearest large city (Salona),
it was surrounded by ramparts. And the internal layout of the palace
is reminiscent of a military camp - cardo and decumanus, the main
vertical streets correspond to the main camp streets via praetoria
and via principalis. There were four entrances to the palace: three
on the land side and one on the sea side. The entire space of the
palace was divided into two parts, each with a different purpose. In
the northern part were located buildings for service, army,
warehouses, etc. In the southern, more luxurious part, which was
raised above the vaulted substructures (the so-called basements of
the palace) due to the alignment with the northern part, there were
buildings intended for the imperial family. The facades were not the
same either.
The most representative was the southern one,
facing the sea. In the lower part (which was flooded by the sea in
Diocletian's time) there were smaller openings and doors, the
so-called porta aenea (Brass door). The east and west facades are
similar to each other and without decoration, and the doors on them
are called porta argentea (Silver Gate) and porta ferrea (Iron
Gate). On the north façade was the main entrance to the palace with
a double door with an architrave - porta aurea (Golden Gate), on
which lay an arch with niches containing statues (probably Jupiter
and four tetrarchs). Of the two main streets, the cardo led to the
peristyle, an open space in front of the emperor's apartment, to the
left of which was the emperor's mausoleum (today the Cathedral of
St. Domnius). To the right of the peristyle were three temples. The
first is Jupiter's, and the other two are today called Cybele's and
Venus's, although those names have not been confirmed. The king's
apartment was entered from the opposite side through the vestibule.
The former layout of the rooms can be reconstructed with the help of
ground floor halls, which are of the same layout.
The floor plan of the palace was conceived as a rectangle, but the
adaptation to the terrain, during construction, imposed minor
deviations (east: 214.97 m, north: 174.74 m, south: 181.65 m). The
front walls of the palace are massive in their lower parts and
simple without openings, and in the upper parts they are soluble
with large arched windows that are simple towards the mainland, ie.
on the west, north, and east facades, and dissected by cornices,
consoles, and half-pillars on the south façade facing the sea. The
outer walls of the palace, except the western one, are largely well
preserved to this day.
Sixteen towers on the front walls
facing the mainland give the palace the character of a fort. The
four towers at the corners are square in plan. Two of the six towers
of octagonal layout framed three land entrances, six towers of
rectangular layout were located between the corner and octagonal. To
this day, three corner towers (except the south-western one) and
only the remains of octagonal and rectangular ones have been
partially preserved.
Three well-preserved land entrances to
this day are architecturally dissected, especially the northern one,
which was the main access from Salona. The south, sea gate, simple
and smaller in size, is also well preserved.
Wide streets (cardo and decumanus), lined with
porches, were accessed through a land gate through defensive
courtyards (propugnaculum). The main streets merged in the center of
the palace, along which to the south stretched an open space - the
peristyle, bordered by pillars with arches. The sacral spaces east
and west of the peristyle were framed by walls. In the eastern area,
a monumental building with an outer octagonal and inner circular
ground plan has been preserved to this day, vaulted with a brick
dome and divided into two rows of pillars and wreaths, and a frieze
in which the busts of Diocletian and his wife Priska are preserved.
The building is bordered on the outside by a porch (peripterum),
which has been largely preserved to this day. In earlier sources
this building is mentioned as the Temple of Jupiter, and in more
recent scientific literature as Diocletian's Mausoleum.
In
the western sacral area, a small temple with a rectangular ground
plan, vaulted with a coffered, richly decorated vault, is very well
preserved to this day. According to earlier descriptions, it is the
temple of John or Aesculapius, and according to more recent
literature, the temple of Jupiter. Remains of two circular temples
have recently been found in the same area. According to the
description of the Split chancellor Prokulijan from the 16th
century, the southern temple was dedicated to Cybele, and the
northern to Venus. On the south side of the peristyle the middle
staircase descends into the ground floor halls and connects the
south door with the center of the palace. Two side staircases rise
in the porch of the prothrone, from which the vestibule, the
vestibule of the emperor's chambers, is accessed.
This building is square on the outside and circular on the inside, vaulted with a dome. From there, the emperor's apartment was approached, which stretched to a depth of 40 m along the entire southern façade; it is only partially preserved on the upper floor, but its ground-floor, translated substructures that carried it directly have been almost completely preserved, so that the overall layout and appearance of the upper spaces can be seen given the coincidence of the upper and lower floor plans. On the west side of the upper floor are preserved the remains of a hall with a dome and two halls with apses, and on the east side parts of an octagonal dining room (triclinium) with three halls with a cross plan. The wall of the western cross hall has been preserved in full height. Diocletian's apartment was interconnected by a long room along the south facade (cryptoportic) from which a view of the sea was open through 42 windows and 3 loggias. North of the emperor's apartment, two baths were recently found, one next to the west and the other next to the east halls. In the northern part of the palace there were two buildings, bordered by main and peripheral streets parallel to the outer walls. Parts of the original sewer system were found in several places in the palace. The 9 km long water supply system supplied the palace with drinking water, and most of it is still in use today.
Peristyle
Peristyle - free space, surrounded by pillars and
covered; lobby or hallway with pillars. The original name is Pločata
sv. Dujma. (Cathedral Plaza) It consists of the peristyle of the
former Diocletian's Palace.
It was located on the main cardo
(cardo), the former Diocletian's palace, and in the northern part it
intersected with its main decumanus (decumanus). On the sides it is
bordered by two rows of Corinthian-style pillars connected by
arches. The sides of the façade were decorated with two sphinxes,
one of which is still almost perfectly preserved in the square. The
facade of the square is divided into two parts: the upper leads to
the Vestibule, and the lower by stairs to the magnificent basements
of the palace. The facade leading to the Vestibule was decorated
with three statues, one of which represented the emperor Diocletian,
the other the god Jupiter while the third remains unknown.
Protiron, which was located on the south side, also contributed to
the importance of the Peristyle, because from it the emperor
Diocletian addressed the inhabitants of the other part of the
palace. He also connected, separated, the northern part of the
palace for servants, the army ... and the southern part where the
emperor lived. On its western side were the baptistery (Temple of
Jupiter), and the temples of Venus and Cybele, and on the eastern
side of Diocletian's mausoleum, today's cathedral.
It is used
as a space for major events in the Palace and due to its excellent
acoustics it often serves as a natural stage and stage for many
musical-scenic spectacles. Of these, the most famous is the
traditional performance of Verdi's Aida during the Split summer.
According to its composition,
Diocletian's Palace contains elements of the imperial villa, the
Hellenistic city and the fortified military camp (castrum). From the
point of view of construction in the palace, the spans were mostly
overcome by the use of arches, ie vaults, which transmit forces
obliquely to the foundations, while in the representative parts the
spans were overcome by the use of stone beams. Solid, finely worked
stone is used to build representative parts as well as all other
parts that are exposed to higher stresses. Plastered or clad parts
of the wall were built of fine stone, aligned at certain intervals
with four rows of bricks. The vaults are made of light river stone
(tufa), parts of higher concentrated stresses in the vaults are
built of brick. The ceiling and roof constructions were wooden.
Decorative treatment on architectural elements is characteristic of
the way of working in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. From the
dimensions of the preserved parts it follows that the palace was
built according to a project that was quoted in Roman feet.
Use of materials from the palace
The Church of Santa Maria della
Salute in Venice was built in part from the stone blocks of the
eight towers of Diocletian's Palace, from the north and east walls,
which were demolished by order of the Venetian providor Alvise
Zorzi.
With the death of Emperor Diocletian in
316, life in the palace did not fade, and transformations began in
the first centuries of the palace's life. Being owned by the Roman
court, it provided refuge to exiled members of the imperial family,
and the most important event was the demolition of Salona in the
early 6th century when part of the exiled population found refuge
within the palace walls and a new, organized city life began.
In the period of the free medieval commune, between the 12th and
14th centuries, there was a major architectural development, when
numerous medieval houses filled not only Roman buildings but also
most of the free space of streets and porches. In that period, the
construction of the Romanesque bell tower of the Cathedral of St.
Dujma.
Romanesque art is also represented by the works of great masters
such as Andrija Buvina who made the wooden doors of the cathedral in
the 13th century and Juraj Dalmatinac, from whose workshops came the
magnificent noble palaces in Venetian Gothic style with Renaissance
hints (eg the Papalić family palace). In the cathedral is also his
masterpiece, the altar of St. Staša.
Since the 7th century,
the palace has lived as the city of Split, which has been expanding
to the west since the early Middle Ages and has been closed by walls
on several occasions. Adaptations of the sacral buildings of the
palace into the Split Cathedral and the baptistery, the
pre-Romanesque church of St. Martin and Our Lady of the bell tower,
pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and other buildings,
witness the uninterrupted life of the city and the emergence of new
qualities, which with preserved parts of Diocletian's Palace form a
whole of the greatest values of architectural heritage.
Diocletian's Palace is not only a remarkable ancient monument, but
also a national and world good. Together with the later medieval
additions, it forms a valuable archaeological and
historical-artistic complex and was therefore included in the UNESCO
World Heritage List in 1979.
The basements of Diocletian's Palace are the covered and partly
underground space in the southernmost part of the Old Town (part of
the former Diocletian's Palace) in Split. These are vaulted, larger
or smaller hall spaces and corridors between them. Their area is as
big as an eighth of the entire former Palace.
They were
formed during the construction of the Palace in a position with a
slope towards the sea shore, in order to level the level of the
southern, residential part, with other parts of the Palace. Their
spaces have various shapes: basilica, central, central - cross,
rectangular, etc. Their walls served as the foundations of the
imperial residential buildings above them, so the shapes of their
spaces probably coincided with the shape of these buildings, which
disappeared with the design of houses and streets in Split in the
Middle Ages. They were probably also used for storage, perhaps
dungeon space.
Through their middle, as part of the main
cardino (Cardo maximus) of Diocletian's Palace, the corridor that
crosses from Pločata Sv. Dujma ("Peristyle") leads to the exit on
the Riva, the so-called porta aenea (Brass Gate), the port gate of
the former Palace, and which divides them into eastern and western
parts. Along their southern side, along the walls of the Palace,
there is a wide codnik from which access to certain areas of the
Cellar.
In time they were almost completely overwhelmed, but
the awareness of their existence in Split existed permanently (the
old Split name for them is "Grote") and, with awe and piety, they
were considered dungeons in which Emperor Diocletian tortured
Christians. However, some more enterprising citizens of Split who
had houses above them sometimes broke through their vaults and
rearranged them into their own storage and basement spaces.
Their excavation began in the 19th century, and had its greatest
momentum in the 1950s. to this day they are mostly discovered. The
western part of the Cellar is completely preserved and is almost
completely accessible for sightseeing. Their eastern part partially
collapsed during the Middle Ages, but most of it is now discovered
and accessible to the public, although much more valuable, medieval
and later buildings and streets of the city, along with the old
monastery and church of Sv. Clare, who were at the site of the
collapse and in its vicinity.
What should perhaps be
considered the true value of the Cellar and what makes Split unique
in the world, is the fact that above their impressive, monumental
spaces, for almost a thousand and a half years, is the living tissue
of the city, streets and houses of Split.
Basements are used
today as attractive fairs and exhibition spaces.
Despite
his success as an emperor Diocletian
left a last
mark on Christian Church for his persecution. It started
in 303 then Emperor Diocletian along with Maximian,
Galerius, and Constantius issue a series of edicts against
Christians. The difficulty of this endeavor was in
popularity of the religion. Diocletian's own wife was
Christian. So Roman authorities were advised to safe lives
if Christians gave up their manuscripts. Bishops obviously
did not want to carry out this blasphemous orders, but
sacrificing their flock was also not part of the plan.
Instead many wrote fake gospels to preserve lives of their
fellow Christians and books of the Bible. Today journalists
come out with "great" sensations about hidden mysteries and
yet explanation is more trivial and simple. Large number of
apocryphal writings were written by the Church, not its
enemies. And purpose was not veneration, but preservation of
true texts and people who read them.