Split: a love letter, plus a guide

It’s 7:14 a.m. on the Riva and the sun is just clearing the bell tower of Sveti Duje, and I am, for the four hundredth time in my life, drinking a coffee at Caffè Bar Centro with one foot in the past and one eye on the calendar wondering when I have to leave again. I left Split for the first time on a Tuesday in September of 2005, on what was supposed to be a two-week software contract in Munich. I am writing this on the same marble table I sat at the night before that flight. I have, in the most literal sense, never finished leaving.

This is a guide to Split. It is also a confession.

Before we begin. Split was built 1,700 years ago by a Roman emperor. Please behave like he is still here. Diocletian retired to this palace in 305 AD to be left alone — the quiet was the point. He is buried in what is now our cathedral, ten metres from where you’ll order your first coffee. He has not, technically, gone anywhere. Don’t shout in the Peristyle. Don’t drag a roller suitcase down the limestone steps at 7 a.m. Don’t carve initials into anything. Don’t get drunk and pee in the cathedral courtyard (yes, this happens; we are very tired of it). The emperor is watching. So are we.

Why I keep coming back

I tremble. I mean this literally. Every single time the plane from wherever I’ve been banks over the Brač channel on the descent into Resnik airport — when the limestone of the Kozjak ridge slides past the right window and the bay opens below me and I can already see the white stone of the city — I tremble. Twenty years. A hundred-plus returns. Still trembling.

I have tried for a long time to articulate why. I think it’s because Split is the only place where I am, structurally, not a stranger. Everywhere else I have lived — Munich, Lisbon, Berlin, three weeks in Cairo, a winter in Bangkok — I have been a foreigner of some grade. Even in cities I love deeply (Lisbon especially), I will always be the estrangeiro with the slightly-too-good Portuguese. In Split, when I walk through the Peristyle on a Tuesday morning at seven, I am simply walking through the Peristyle. The waiter at Caffè Bar Centro doesn’t ask what I’d like. Mate just brings the short coffee, no sugar. He has been doing this since I was seventeen.

That’s the soul of the place. It’s not the tourism. It’s not the postcards. It’s the fact that the city remembers you, and the people in it grew up with you, and the limestone of Diocletian’s Palace was warm under your hands when you were six and is warm under your hands now.

I love its soul. I love its people. I love that the city is small enough that you’ll see the same waiter on three different streets in the same day. I love that the Roman emperor built his retirement palace here in 305 AD and ten thousand of us still live inside its walls. I love that the pomalo — the Dalmatian instruction to take it slow — is genuinely how we work. I love that fjaka — the productive afternoon laziness that doesn’t translate into any other language — is considered a civic virtue. I love that on a hot August evening you can stand on Matejuška breakwater with a takeaway beer and listen to a six-man klapa harmonising about the sea, the wine, and the woman they didn’t marry, and nobody is being paid to perform.

This is my city. I have written ninety essays about places that are not Split. Every single one of them, at the end, has a short paragraph called the Split lens — what reminded me of home, what we could borrow. The accumulation, I realised somewhere around essay sixty, was its own kind of confession. I have been comparing every city I’ve ever been to against Split. I have been measuring the world with a Dalmatian ruler.

A few facts before the guide proper

Split is a city of about 175,000 people on the central Dalmatian coast of Croatia. The old town is Diocletian’s Palace — the retirement complex the Roman emperor Diocletian began building for himself in 295 AD and finished by 305. He died here in 311. The palace was perfectly four-square Roman, with the imperial residential half on the southern side facing the sea. After the empire ended and the surrounding city of Salona was destroyed by Avars and Slavs in the 7th century, the survivors moved inside the abandoned palace walls. They never left. There are people living inside Diocletian’s walls today. We are descendants of seventh-century squatters in a third-century emperor’s holiday house. We have, on the whole, made it work.

The dialect is the čakavian of the Dalmatian coast, with significant Italian loanwords from the centuries of Venetian rule. The football club is Hajduk Split. Its supporters’ group, Torcida, founded 1950, is the oldest in Europe. The traditional song form is klapa — unaccompanied male-voice harmony.

That’s the dry summary. Here’s the city.

Where to base yourself

Inside the Palace walls if you want the postcard experience. Accommodation is mostly small apartments in old residential buildings — be warned that some of these have steep stairs and zero soundproofing. The atmosphere is irreplaceable. Don’t stay more than four nights inside the walls; Diocletian designed his rooms to face inward and the lack of direct sun gets to you.

Veli Varoš, just west of the Palace on the slope rising toward Marjan hill. This is where I’d stay. Small stone houses, narrow steep streets, lemon trees in tiny courtyards. The local konobas (Buffet Fife, Konoba Matejuška) are walking distance. So is the sea.

Lučac, on the slope east of the Palace down to the small fishermen’s harbour at Matejuška. Working neighbourhood with the kind of small details — laundry on lines, a man in pyjamas walking a dog — that the postcard doesn’t capture. The harbour, with its small fishing boats and old slipway, is the heart of evening life when the weather is good.

Bačvice, the small bay east of the ferry port. The city’s beach neighbourhood. Useful in summer if you want to be a five-minute walk from the picigin.

Avoid the area immediately around the ferry port for a longer stay — it’s loud, touristed, and the views are mostly of the cruise ships. Two nights max.

What to actually do

Walk Diocletian’s Palace before 8 a.m. This is the entire trip in one instruction. Between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. in summer, the Peristyle is a slow-moving river of phones held above heads. Before 8, it is one of the most beautiful pieces of late-Roman architecture in the world and you’ll share it with three coffee-drinkers and a postman. The Substructures (the underground service halls of the palace, now an archaeological site) are worth the small entry fee — they’re some of the best-preserved late-Roman vaulted spaces in Europe.

Climb the bell tower of Sveti Duje. Around €7, 183 steps up an enclosed spiral staircase that is not for the claustrophobic or the heat-averse. The tower is bolted onto Diocletian’s own mausoleum — which the Christians took over in the 7th century, removed the emperor’s sarcophagus, and converted into a cathedral. The historical poetry of this is worth a thought: the city’s cathedral is the converted tomb of the man who persecuted Christians most enthusiastically. From the top: the entire palace below, Marjan to the west, Mosor to the east, the islands of Šolta and Brač south. Best at sunset.

Walk Marjan. The 178-metre forested hill on the western promontory of the city. Locals walk it before work, after work, before dinner, after dinner. The main paved path goes from the western edge of Veli Varoš up to the first viewpoint (Prva vidilica) — where, as a seventeen-year-old, I once sat with a joint and glazed over the entire city for the better part of two hours without moving, which I do not recommend but which I am also not going to pretend didn’t happen — then past a series of small chapels carved into the rock, then the second viewpoint and onward to the lighthouse at the far western end. The full loop is 7 km and takes about two hours at an unhurried pace. Do it in the morning.

Play picigin at Bačvice. Picigin is the only-Split sport — a ball-game played in the shallow sand-bottomed water of Bačvice bay with a small bouncy ball (the balun), no points, no winners, only the obligation to keep the ball in the air. It originated here in the 1920s, has never really been played anywhere else, and you are warmly invited to join any circle that’s playing. The locals will laugh at you. They mean it kindly.

Take the ferry to Šolta or Brač. The slow Jadrolinija ferry to Rogač (Šolta) or Supetar (Brač) costs a few euros, takes an hour, and gives you the city’s working maritime life on the way out. On Šolta, walk the trail from Maslinica to Stomorska. On Brač, take the bus from Supetar across the island to Bol on the south coast, where the famous Zlatni Rat beach reshapes itself daily with the currents.

Visit the Meštrović Gallery. On the western slope of Marjan, in the villa Ivan Meštrović — Croatia’s greatest sculptor — built for himself in the 1930s. The collection is one of Europe’s most-overlooked single-artist museums. Combined ticket includes the Kaštelet chapel a few hundred metres further west, where Meštrović’s wood-carved Life of Christ cycle is one of the most quietly extraordinary spaces in Dalmatia.

Eat fish on a Friday. The Pazar (the main market on the eastern wall of the Palace) opens at 7 a.m. The Peškarija (fish market) opens at 7:30. A Friday afternoon at Konoba Matejuška, with a brodet of whatever came in that morning and a half-litre of Plavac Mali, is what Sunday lunch is for in this town.

Hear a klapa. If you’re lucky you’ll catch an informal group on the Riva at dusk on a summer Sunday — no stage, no microphones, just five or six men in middle age standing in a half-circle harmonising about the sea, the wine, and the woman they didn’t marry. If you’re not that lucky, the formal Festa klapa performances at the Peristyle in summer take place in one of the most acoustically alive natural amphitheatres in the world.

See a Hajduk match at Poljud. Stadium just north of the centre. The Torcida supporters’ section is loud, smoke-flared, and entirely friendly to visitors who respect the team colours (white). Don’t wear red. Red is the colour of Dinamo Zagreb, our principal rival, and you will get looks.

Where to eat (the konobas I’d send anyone to)

A konoba is a Dalmatian tavern — traditional, family-run, fish and meat from a wood-fired grill, the wine in a pitcher.

Konoba Matejuška — Family-run, a side street one block from the harbour. The brodet (Dalmatian fish stew), the grilled fish, the proper old-school service. Two-week-advance reservation in season.

Villa Spiza — Old-town, tiny, no menu (the day’s catch is on a board), no reservations. Queue at 7 p.m. or arrive at 11 for late lunch. The grilled sole, the octopus salad.

Buffet Fife — Bottom of Veli Varoš near the harbour. Cheap, working-class, the same family since 1936. The pašticada (slow-cooked beef in dark wine sauce, served with gnocchi) is the dish.

Bokeria — Modern Dalmatian in a converted old building. Younger, more wine-focused, the cooking inventive but rooted. For a less-traditional evening.

Kruščić — Sourdough bakery on Obrov for the morning bread; their fritule and kroštule at Christmas are the city’s best.

Caffè Bar Centro — Mate’s place. The short coffee, no sugar. Sit on the marble. Don’t ask for Wi-Fi.

Bačvice gelaterias — the small ones along the bay. Classic vanilla on a hot August afternoon, eaten with feet in the water.

Nightlife (I don’t really do this anymore but)

Confession: I haven’t closed a Split bar in maybe seven years. Forty turned out to be the age where I started preferring sleep. But the city’s summer-party reputation is real and earned; here’s where I’d still go and where I’d send my younger cousins.

Bačvice strip — Above the city beach, the rib of cafe-bars and clubs (Bani, Vanilla, Tropic) that runs from the seafront up the hill. This is the loud version of Split’s night. Loud until 4 a.m. in season. Mostly under-30. Plastic cups. The walk home is downhill, which is the saving grace.

Marvlvs Library Jazz Bar — Where I’d actually go if forced. Tiny room near the Peristyle, jazz on most evenings, the kind of place where you can hear yourself think.

Fluid — Small cocktail bar inside the palace walls. Decent list, intimate, opens late.

Dom Mladih — The city’s youth centre, where the alternative-music scene the cruise-ship circuit doesn’t see lives — Croatian rock bands, small electronica nights, the occasional poetry reading. Check their calendar.

Galija after a Hajduk win — Not nightlife in the bar-crawl sense, but the post-match drinking ritual at one of the small Hajduk pubs is a Split institution. White shirts, loud voices, deep love for a football club that wins less often than it should. Wear white. Don’t wear red.

Caveat: in July and August the Bačvice strip is a slow-moving river of teenagers from a hundred countries and the locals largely avoid it. The smaller old-town bars are where you’ll find Splićani after midnight, if you find them at all.

When to come

Late September through early November. The summer cruise crowds are gone, the sea is still 22°C in October, the figs are ripe. The right answer if you can only come once.

Late April through May. The other right answer. The orange trees flower, the city wakes up, the locals are not yet exhausted by tourism.

July and August are the high season. The old town is at full saturation between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. The locals largely retreat to the islands or to the kuća na moru (sea cottages) on the coast. Don’t expect the city to be itself in July.

Late December through early March is the off-season. Many konobas keep reduced hours. The city is grey, occasionally bura-blasted, and entirely itself. I love it in February. It is the only time I’m here without other visitors and the only time the Peristyle at 7 a.m. has me as the only person standing in it.

Practical notes

• Visa: Croatia is in Schengen since 2023.
• Money: Euro since 2023. Card universally; cash useful at the Pazar and the smaller konobas.
• Language: Croatian. Dobar dan (good day), hvala (thank you), pomalo (slowly), fjaka (the productive lazy afternoon). The Split dialect is čakavian with Italian loanwords; locals will switch to standard Croatian when they hear visitors trying.
• The cruise ships: Up to four large ones in port simultaneously on summer Saturdays. The old town is at maximum saturation on those days. Check the port schedule and plan around them — at least, plan to be at Marjan, on a ferry, or on the back streets of Veli Varoš between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
• The bura and jugo winds: The bura is the cold dry north wind off Mosor in autumn and winter. The jugo is the warm humid south wind that brings the rain. Locals will tell you the bura is honest weather and the jugo makes everyone irritable. They are not entirely wrong.
• Football: Hajduk matches at Poljud are some of the most atmospheric in European football. Tickets at the Torcida section are €10–15. Wear white.

A final thought

I have spent twenty years measuring the world against my city. I have come back from Tokyo wishing we had Tokyo’s metro, from Paris wishing we’d closed our waterfront to cars the way they closed the Seine, from Lisbon wishing we’d kept our trams, from Copenhagen wishing we’d cleaned the harbour, from Marrakech wishing we’d kept our Roman bath culture, from Patagonia wishing we’d built the Velebit trail network. And every single time, the plane has banked over the Brač channel, I have seen the white stone of the city below, and I have trembled. The lessons from elsewhere are real. The trembling is realer.

Split is the love of my life. I have known this since I was nineteen and tried to leave for the first time and got as far as Trogir and turned around. I left properly at twenty-two. I have spent the twenty years since calibrating exactly how much absence I can stand before I have to come back.

If you visit, please be gentle with the city. Stay in the small family-run apartments rather than the corporate short-term rentals. Eat in the konobas where the same family has cooked the same food for sixty years. Walk Marjan in the morning before the heat. Try picigin at Bačvice and laugh when the locals laugh at you. Sit on the Riva at sunset with a coffee and watch the light go down behind Šolta. Be quiet in the Peristyle at seven in the morning. Tip the klapa singers on the Matejuška breakwater.

This is my city. It is not yours. But for the four or five days you’ll spend here, you are welcome to share it with me. The plane will bank over the channel. You’ll see the bay. You won’t tremble — that’s just my thing. But you’ll understand, I think, why I do.