To this favoured spot on the coast near the then powerful Illyrian metropolis of Salona came Diocletian, and here he built his imperial villa, where he hoped to live peacefully for the remainder of his days. And what a wonderful villa it must have been!
Its walls were from five hundred and seventy to seven hundred feet in length, fifty feet in height, and encompassed nine and one-half acres of ground. The eminent English architect, Adam, who, in 1757, accomplished the difficult and arduous task of plotting the first plans of the ruined palace on paper with no previous mathematical data to guide him, said that it was “a climax in architecture.” So much of its original splendour did it retain that the imperial Roman historian avowed that “it surpassed even in its ruin all powers of description;” and that was more than six centuries after Diocletian’s death.
On the south side, facing the sea, the walls were seventy feet in height, because of the sloping of the land. The outline of this stone-work was broken by a grand total of sixteen towers, only four of which, those on the corners, were higher—and that only by a few feet—than the walls themselves. There were four entrance gates to the palace and three of these can still be distinguished.
If you could have entered the north gate of the palace at a time when its builder and owner was ripening in years within its precincts, you would have looked down on a street thirty-six feet in width. On either side, graceful stone arcades dwindled into the perspective and at the farther end of the street the view was interrupted by the massive portico and dome of the vestibule to the imperial residence. At a point three hundred feet south of this gate, where you would have stood, the lines of arcades were exchanged for the beautiful columns of a peristyle, on either side of which were enclosed courts, that to the right containing the temple of Æsculapius and that to the left, the temple of Jupiter.
Near the peristyle, a street, also fringed with arcades, crossed from west to east, having its termini at the Porta Ferrea and the Porta Ænea respectively. To the south of the vestibule the nave of the palace, ninety-eight feet long and forty-five feet wide, lined with rows of columns and an aisle fourteen feet in width on either side, extended from west to east. Mosaics and multi-coloured marbles made up the decorations of the interior of the apartments, and the beauty of the courts was enhanced by the flowers and plants of this latitude.
From the peristyle, the columns of which were of Cipallino and rose-coloured granite, flights of steps led to the temples at the sides. The Temple of Jupiter, which originally stood apart in a walled court having the peristyle as a screen in front, was built by Diocletian as a prospective tomb in which he intended his body to be placed after death, but now the building serves as the Duomo of Spalato. Originally it had a projecting portico of its own in front, but this has been replaced by the campanile of the Duomo. The other of the two temples, that of Æsculapius, does duty to-day as the city’s baptistry.
Much of the walls of the palace remain to-day, and shut in the old town of Spalato built within the enclosure by the refugees from Salona. Outside of these moss-grown, inarticulate historians of Roman occupation you will find modern European dwellings, school-houses and shady little parks, and at places even on the top of the walls some sacrilegious Spalatines have built their more humble abodes. The peristyle of the famous palace now forms the town square.
After you have made many conjectures as to what a residence the palace of Diocletian must have been, and what scenes were pictured there in the days when its builder made it his home, you will walk outside the walls of the old city, which you must do in order to find a carriage, for horses are not permitted within the gates on account of the narrowness of the streets, and bargain with a cocher to take you to Salona.
On the way you will pass a wonderful ruined aqueduct, which Diocletian built to supply his palace with water from the hills, and which has now been restored to the same use by the modern Spalatines. The road first rises to the top of a ridge and then stretches across the valley of the Riviera dei Castelli which extends from Salona to Traü, the ancient Tragurium of the Romans, famed for its marble, and colonized originally in 380, B.C., by Syracusan Greeks from the island of Lissa. The road is so dusty that the vegetation growing along the side is completely covered with the fine white powder; but the drive is not long and your visit to Salona will be sure to repay you fully for any slight discomforts endured on the way.
