History, Culture and Vibrancy
by Goky Brkic
With a population of more than two hundred thousand, Split is the second largest city in Croatia and the center of the coastal region of Dalmatia. Known for its culture, history, and tourist attractions, Split is the best Croatia has to offer.
History and Landmarks
The origins of the city can be traced all the way to the Romans. The Roman Emperor Diocletian, who lived in the 4th century AD, wanted to build himself a retirement mansion. He liked the area of today’s Split for its natural beauties and the warm Adriatic Sea, so he had it built there. In the centuries that followed, the city of Split grew around it, even after the Romans were long gone. The Palace and its surroundings eventually become the historical city core of Split (or Split Old Town), and nowadays the remains of the Diocletian’s Palace are among the best preserved remains of a Roman palace in the world. It was included in the register of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage in 1979, and is even featured on Croatian banknotes. Built in an irregular rectangle, it was a combination of a luxurious villa and a military camp. Its walls and the center court, the Peristyle, now housing various vendors and souvenir shops, can be explored freely by tourists. However, a tour through its cellar includes a 5 Euro entrance fee.
Some Roman structures were modified to serve a different purpose, such as the unused Diocletian’s mausoleum, which was incorporated into the Cathedral of St. Domnius, another of the city’s landmarks. Consecrated in the 7th century AD, historians believe it’s the second oldest structure to serve as a Christian Cathedral. Even though some of its parts were constructed afterwards, such as the 12th century Bell Tower, the Cathedral remains an important example of Romanesque architecture in the Mediterranean.
Museums and Culture
A city of such interesting history has several museums and galleries in which parts of that history are exhibited. For instance, the Gallery of Fine Arts contains works spanning through six centuries, thus providing an overview of artistic movements in Split and Croatia. Founded in 1931, it houses one of the greatest exhibitions of paintings and sculpture by major Croatian artists, but dedicating space to contemporary art as well.
The Split City Museum features a collection of local cultural, artistic, and economic heritage, plus a collection of works by Emanuel Vidovic, the greatest Split-based painter of the 20th century. If you wish to learn more about the traditional Dalmatian lifestyle, visit the Ethnographic Museum, dedicated to promoting folk heritage and finding its new, contemporary applications.
The Adriatic Sea was crucial in shaping the lives and culture of the people of the city. Split’s inhabitants were always sailors and fishermen, and the exhibits of the Croatian Maritime Museum show that part of their lifestyle. Displaying marine equipment, weapons, navigation gear, ship models, uniforms and related artwork, it’s crucial in understanding the Dalmatian history and culture.
Cuisine
The cuisine of Split and the surrounding area is heavily based on seafood; fish, clams, oysters are usually boiled or grilled and served with vegetables or potato. Local delicacies include grilled sardines, the octopus salad, or the special kind of dry ham called “prsut”. Served with local wine, the food is usually not spicy, but some restaurants, drawing influences from other Mediterranean countries, started adding exotic spices to traditional Dalmatian dishes, giving them a new spin. For classic local delicacies search for a “konoba” sign, denoting a family-owned tavern specialized in authentic dishes. Of course, if you’re not a lover of seafood, there are plenty of fast food joints in every part of the city.
Nightlife
During the summer tourist season the local nightlife flourishes, especially along the Bacvice beachside, featuring several late-opening clubs and beach bars. But the city is big and diverse enough for anyone, with different clubs playing vastly different music. Electronic music lovers should proceed to the minimally decorated Quasimodo, Split’s top venue for DJ nights, or the Jungla (Hula Hula), playing house and techno music. Rock lovers should visit the Kocka or Judino Drvo, where local bands often perform. O’ Hara Music Club is popular among tourists, due to its attractive location at the Zenta waterfront; hosting great parties, it’s great for dancing and drinking. Also, a plethora of bars can be found at the main city promenade, locally known as Riva, which is a great place for slow walks among the rows of palm trees with the incredible view of turquoise Adriatic Sea.
Events
The city is especially vibrant and lively during the summer, and various events (exhibitions, concerts, plays) are held every day. The most well-known are the Mediterranean Film Festival (held in June), showcasing regional films at several local venues and the Split Summer Festival, consisting of open-air theater and various dance and music performances. Some parts of the program are even held in the Diocletian’s Palace.
The Palace is also the location of the annual Festival of Flowers (usually held in May), where exhibitors display their flower arrangements based on a particular theme. Visually stunning, it’s a must-visit if you’re in the city at that time. If you’re interested in Roman culture, you’ll be happy to hear that there’s a whole festival dedicated to it. The Days of Diocletian are usually held in late August, and the entire area of the Palace becomes a living monument to the Romans, featuring their cuisine, lifestyle, clothing and customs. Entertaining and educational at the same time, the Days of Diocletian are especially popular with kids.
The 7th of May is a date very important for the people of Split: that’s when the celebration of Split’s patron saint, Saint Domnius (“Sveti Duje” in Croatian) takes place. It’s an important local holiday and a feast day, with a procession, food, music and a carnival.
Private Tour: Split Day Trip from Dubrovnik
If You Go:
♦ The Croatian currency is Kuna (1 Euro = 7.55 Kuna, 1 US Dollar = 6.7 Kuna)
♦ Split has an international airport some 25 kilometers west of the city. There are lines from and to major European cities, especially in the summer. Airport buses or taxi transfers will take you from the airport to the city center. Notice: bare in mind that buses can be overcrowded during main tourist season (June to September)
♦ Split is connected to Zagreb, the Croatian capital, with the A1 motorway. The road infrastructure is generally good and the trip takes around three and a half hours if you’re traveling by car.
♦ A good deal of Croatians speaks English quite well (Italian and German are spoken as well) and will be glad to help if you need anything. Police are accustomed to dealing with tourists and you can approach them if you have a problem or a question.
♦ The country joined the European Union in 2013, meaning that travelers from EU countries can enter the country visa-free with a passport or a national identity card. Nationals of other countries that can enter Croatia without a visa include the United States, Brazil, Japan, Australia, Argentina, Turkey, Canada and Chile. Visitors from other countries may require a Visa to enter Croatia.
♦ If you decide to visit Split, you should also check the weather forecast at Croatia’s meteorological and hydrological service as well as Tourist Board of Split for more useful information.
About the author:
Goky Brkic is a passionate traveler and enthusiastic writer on topics that cover travels and exploration of new interesting places, cuisines and cultures around the world. He’s especially familiar with the region of Balkans and also enjoys wandering through coastal cities of the Mediterranean.
Diocletians mausoleum, Split by Beyond silence / Public domain
Cathedral of Saint Domnius by by Beyond silence / Public domain
Split Gallery of Fine Arts by JoJan / CC BY
Dalmatinski Prsut by Haydn Blackey from Cardiff, Wales / CC BY-SA
Split city by DIREKTOR / Public domain
Diocletian palace by neufal54 from Pixabay
At this point, I wasn’t worried about the other passengers’ thoughts. Dignity, respect, pretending not to be a tourist – all out the window having tried very unsuccessfully to validate my 5 Euro ticket for a solid ten minutes of the bus ride. I could stare and gawp all I wanted; and so I did, drinking in that immense sight. I had read the myths since I was a kid, studied the history in school, and poured over the art for project after project in undergrad. Thrill raced through me faster than the cold had, as I discovered for the first time something I thought I already knew. Here it all was in 3D.
Thankfully, what he actually meant was that he couldn’t get me to the front door along the one-way pedestrian street. But he could get me close and, after a nice little chat about whether it was more expensive to live in the UK, he did. In hindsight, it was quite beneficial to have a little tour of the city. But on a pitch black evening in February, hindsight wasn’t on my mind. What I was actually thinking about was snow – snow in the Mediterranean. For the first time in five years, it was forecast to snow in Athens and as we drove, big white flakes melted on the windscreen. Not enough to stick in town, but there was plenty to pile up in the higher altitudes. From the Acropolis and the top of Lycabettus Hill, I spun circles the next day, looking round at the mountains that ringed the basin where the city lived. The big, slow flakes from last night had left them white-capped under cracks of blue sky between stacked layers of grey and white cloud. The sun, when it did decide to join the day, was cold and sharp and my ears froze. I had forgotten to pack a hat.
I found the lower gardens on the hill around the Acropolis full of temples and remains of buildings, statues, column capitals, and broken bits of foundations. The museums and Acropolis grounds felt more like walking into the pictures from the books I had read, studied, photocopied, and researched for the past six years. With an almost reverence, my eyes traced the draping folds of the stone garments that were so much softer and more alive than the drawings and photographs had shown me. Poseidon and Athena had to come to life and watched me carefully as I revelled in the neatly arranged Corinthian column caps I had modelled my own exhibition project on.
After that, I walked and walked and walked the streets, looking for more awe-inspiring moments whatever the weather. Psirri turned out to be a fascinating district. I had booked myself into a lovely little hostel called City Circus for the week, where thankfully everything was warm and cozy with bountiful breakfast and friendly staff. Around the corner was a little spiders’ web of streets and five-point star intersections filled with shops and food. There were bars and music and fried filo dough and cheese concoctions in any shape I fancied. Lamp light and candle light poured through colored glass in the windows to join the colorful plaster walls. The music burst from inside the restaurants and the stones smacked hard under my new shoes. I didn’t want to stay long. I just wanted to see all of it, drink in this new, vivacious, loud place that breathed under my feet.
Athens’ graffiti was most unexpected. It was everywhere, unabashedly adorning abandoned houses, old government buildings, and ramshackle metal fences. My walk into town was a burst of color, screaming ideas at me that I could not understand. But still I knew they were trying to say something, trying to be heard amidst the throng of twelve-story concrete apartment complexes and canvas canopies. After a brisk souvenir search through the bustling side streets around Monastirkai Square, I grabbed a latte in a fourth-story coffee bar. It had huge windows looking out over the red tile roofs, all uneven height and helter-skelter pitch before stopping abruptly for the Hill to rise behind them. Buzzing with voices, the room was warm and curls of smoke caressed the windows. Out of the the top of the hill, the Acropolis rose overlooking the city, ever listening as the centuries marched past under its watchful gaze. How many stories had it seen unfold? What tales could it tell if only I could ask – what stories not found in any of my books? I would never know. My own stories would have to be enough for my curiosity.
On my last day, I took a little ferry to the island of Aegina. I joined up with two American brothers and we kicked little scooters into high gear, revving along the coast. Looking back at the photos, they are very odd – it looked a gloriously sunny day, but we were all wrapped up to our noses in scarves and hats. We rode up to highest point of the island to see the Temple of Aphaia. The three of us wandering around from faded placard to faded placard and gasping at the view and calling back and forth to each other to break the silence. Athens sat white across the blue, blue sea. We could pick out the Acropolis and took guesses at where Olympus was, though we really had no idea whatsoever.
On the way back, we scootered through a seaside town and grabbed coffee. After the hustle of the city and the very present feeling of history at Aphaia, it was odd how quiet the coasts were. Big, abandoned holiday homes half-built lingered just off the shore, silent concrete skeletons that didn’t tell stories like the ancient ruins. I thought it was only the island, but as I sat in a restaurant on Athen’s shore, I was as the sole customer. It was full of chairs placed upside down on tables – a hundred inside and maybe more than a hundred outside. The place felt expectant but mournful, waiting for the summer visitors to come and fill it with vibrance. As I stared silently down the coast, I felt out of place for the first time on my trip. In walking in the footsteps of the ancient past, I had created my own stories. But each story I created was filled with the stories that had come before me. In walking the recently built-up coastline, I felt disconnected from the past, though it surely had no shortage of stories to tell. Perhaps I’m far too picky about architecture.
We are celebrating the conclusion of a Rebetiko Music Festival on the island and are among the grateful throngs standing retsina-less at the side. Grateful that the sell-out concert is able to accommodate the late-comers, and happy that we are part of the audience who are standing ‘in ovation’ for the musicians who had given us such a wonderful weekend of this once outlawed music.
We arrived via ferry and were greeted by that archetypal Greek island scene: a pier thrumming with people and activity, faces alight with anticipation, voices calling out greetings, cafes jumping to attention, and ferry crews bent on maintaining control in the confusion. And in Hydra, donkeys. Perfectly poised teams of donkeys waiting for the stevedores’ commands. Motorized transport is prohibited on the island, except for emergency and sanitation vehicles, so donkeys are ubiquitous. The new refrigerator and month’s supply of water bound for the hill-top monastery? They get loaded on a donkey. We credit the donkeys as well for the blissful soundscape that greeted us on Hydra, where the church bells, the roosters, the laughter, the sounds of the ricocheting soccer ball, the children’s’ calls and the donkey’s hooves on the cobblestones seem to blend seamlessly with the silence. What a pleasure it was to walk through the narrow winding streets and to follow well-marked signs which led to the less explored regions of the island. Twenty minutes into the hills, we were surrounded by the pine forests, the island’s wild horses, and as always in Greece, the remote hill-top monasteries and the vast blue of the Mediterranean.
A particular joy on Hydra was ferreting out the fabled Cohen home on the island – the one he had lived in during the 60s with his Norwegian muse, Marianne Jensen. The years in Hydra had been seminal for Cohen, allowing him to immerse himself in his writing and imagine a future as a poet and songwriter. His house lies snug smongst others on a hill overlooking the harbour and is predictably modest unmarked and shuttered. We trace his probable route down to a favourite swimming platform at the entrance to the harbour. I plunge in, revelling in the clarity of the Mediterranean so close to town, imagining the heat of those summer days that would have coaxed Cohen down to the sea each afternoon. What manna for my imagination and memories still flush with the sound and vision of 60s song writing to relive this magical time for Cohen so many years later! I was not the only one seduced by this ‘oracle of my youth’, but the Cohen legend is thankfully carefully guarded on Hydra – no line-ups, and apart from the occasional furtive photographer outside his house, you can pay your respects in peace.
Rebetiko music, with roots in Anatolia, was fashioned in the ghettos of Piraeus and Athens after the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in the 1920s. It is the folk music of the displaced, the political outsider, the social pariah, and wonderfully marries the modalities familiar to musicians all along the Silk Road. A synthesis of Turkish, Greek, Arab, Persian and Jewish musical traditions, rebitiko gave expression to the experience of the exiled. Themes of love, loss, work, war, poverty, death, violence are embedded in the soul and sound of rebetiko music. Rhythms and melodies are drawn from the cross-cultural traditions and instruments in a rebetiko ensemble are likewise diverse: lyra, santur, guitar, clarinet, oud, tsimbalo, violin, double bass, piano and accordion. The instrument that is emblematic of rebetiko – the bouzouki – became more prominent as the musical form develops in Greece. Commonly associated with the ouzeri and hashish dens, and considered by both Turkish and Greek governments to be either too degenerate or ‘Oriental’ in nature, rebetiko music was forced underground in the 1930s. ‘Cleaned-up’ versions of rebetiko music began to re-emerge in the 1960s and with the growing worldwide popularity of the bouzouki, the rebetiko revival had begun.
Today, rebetiko’s storied past and distinctive musical idiom attract both the scholarly and musical community, the intersection of which we were privileged to witness on that October weekend in Hydra. While some of the academic presentations were specially aimed at “the insider,” (algorhthms of Persian music, anyone?) others – like learning that a dominant scale used in rebetiko music is shared by Jewish Klezmer, Iranian, South Arabic and Flamenco music – help us understand rebetiko’s close relationship with the Middle East. The presentations are interspersed with performances – some held in the famed Melina Mercouri auditorium (named after the Greek actress and a former Minister of Culture) and others in appropriately ‘shady’ cafes. One concert features a Greek singer and a Scottish bouzouki player who balance their Greek rebetiko repertoire with explorations into Celtic music. Suspended in this glorious web of sounds, ideas and cultures, we didn’t seem to mind that we had lost the trail on Hydra, and walked past the monasteries and Marianne right into rebetiko!
About the author:
Folk dancing, or the traditional dances of the ordinary people, is something that can be seen all over Greece, and is a very significant part of local tradition. Each region has its own dances, although there are some dances that are common to all, such as the 12-step syrtos kalamatianos. Some of them may appear slow and staid, while others are faster, with intricate steps, and even jumps and very particular moves, such as touching the floor, bending the knee and swaying; there is a great deal of variety. If you travel to Crete and get the opportunity to watch the very impressive Pentozali dance, with its leaps and twirls, this is not to be missed.
But we are going to concentrate here on the province of Evros. A place where each village is steeped in tradition, and the local costumes reflect that, with different colours, embroidery styles and other details revealing the locations.
In Pentalofos, a village high up in the hills of northern Evros, close to the border with Bulgaria, I attended a dance at Easter. Local musicians, often playing traditional folk instruments such as the gaida, a local version of the bagpipes, come out into the central square of the village. The first year that I went, they were accompanied by a group of people wearing traditional costumes, but it seems that this is not always the case, as there were no costumes the following year. These people, whether dressed up or not, are dancers, and they begin the dance, to a great deal of applause and cheering from the crowds gathered there. After the first two dances, everyone else starts to join in. It is great fun, and the atmosphere is one of celebration and joy.
A major event in the folk dancing calendar is the festival that takes place in Alexandroupoli, the largest town in Evros, every summer, generally towards the end of June. A show is put on by local dancing clubs in the open-air theatre, which is close to the sea and surrounded by pine trees. In such a setting, the atmosphere is amazing. All the participants wear impressive traditional costumes, all different to reflect the places where their dances originated. Last year, over 250 dancers took part, including children as young as 5 years old. Live music fills the incredibly crowded theatre, with people sitting on the steps and standing all the way around the stage, tightly packed. Only those who come early will have a seat; the show is extremely popular.
About the author:
Before I set off on my three week trip to Galicia, Spain’s green, wet and wild northern province, I had a vague idea who Rosalia de Castro was, but none whatsoever about a place called Padron.
Still, my main interest was Rosalia de Castro. Even before I went to Galicia, I was familiar with the idiosyncratic concept of moriña. It’s best translated as a deeply felt longing of every Galego for his home and roots. An example: a Galego who has to move to – say – Madrid, considers himself an ex-pat. Another word for moriña is saludade and that’s also the Leitmotiv of Rosalia’s work.
Moreover, although basically a romantic, she strongly opposed abuse of authority and was a strong defender of women’s rights. And she made her voice heard. Married to Manuel Murgia, a historian, academic and journalist, she had seven children despite a very fragile health. She died at age 48 in 1885 in her home in Padron.
As my train slowed, reaching the small station of Padron, I could already see the house across the railway tracks and immediately understood how this dwelling could have inspired her writing, at the same time giving her the safe surroundings she needed.
The stone cottage is visible, but only just, above the garden full of trees and flowers which Rosalia tended herself. She used to sit among blooming camellia bushes on a carved stone bench and dream up new poems. The whole scene is so romantic that one feels like writing a love poem there and then.
The kitchen with its woodstove and iron kettles looks no different to any other farmhouse kitchen at the time. Her bedroom is spartan, still with her clothes hanging in the closet. Next door is her study with the desk and writing utensils. I wished I could just have sat down, hoping to be infused by her creative spirit.
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