Spalato

Spalato, or less correctly SPALATRO (Slav. Split), the busiest town of Dalmatia, stands on the Adriatic, 160 miles SE. of Fiume. Here in a beautiful situation the Emperor Diocletian built a colossal palace (Salonæ Palatium, whence perhaps Spalato, though more probably from 'ς παλάτιον), to which he retired when he abdicated the throne in 305. The palace faced the sea, looking southwards; its walls were from 570 to 700 feet long and 50 to 70 feet high, and enclosed an area of 9½ acres. It stood square like a Roman camp, and had a gate in the middle of each side, and was of the most solid construction. Architecturally it is of the highest interest in that it contains several features that presage the architectural styles and devices of modern times. Inside the palace the roads connecting the gates crossed at right angles in the middle, and two of the four courts thus formed were each occupied by a temple (or similar building), one to Æsculapius, the other to Jupiter. So at least says an ancient tradition, though some modern authorities claim the latter, and others the former, as the mausoleum of the emperor. The temple of Jupiter is externally an octagon with a colonnaded peristyle and internally a circle covered by a dome. Where the projecting portico was built there now stands a tower built in the 14th and 15th centuries, thoroughly restored in 1891-92. Since the year 650 this temple has been a Christian cathedral; it contains a magnificent marble pulpit. The interior was extensively restored in the years immediately preceding 1885. The other temple is used as a baptistery; it is of small size and rectangular in shape. All the interior buildings and nearly all the exterior walls of this gigantic palace are still standing in a fairly good state of preservation. But the interior was converted into a town in 639 by the citizens of Salona (q.v.) who escaped the destruction of their town by the Avars, and it has been occupied ever since. The existing city of Spalato lies, more than half of it, outside the palace walls. It contains a museum rich in the remains of Salona, and has a lively trade; the Lasva railway (1895-97) connecting it with Bosnia and the Danubian lands. Its industries embrace the manufacture of liqueurs (rosoglio and maraschino), bricks, ropes, &c. Pop. 14,513. See ROMAN ARCHITECTURE; Freeman's Historical Essays (3d series, 1879); and T. G. Jackson's Dalmatia (vol. ii. 1887).