After a beautiful meal at our adopted restaurant on Korčula Island last night, under Jelena’s tender care, we were up at the crack of dawn and on the hyrdrofoil at 6am, arriving in Split at 8.30am. After dropping our bags at the delightful Luxe Hotel we headed just down the road to Diocletian’s Palace, built at the turn of the fourth century in preparation for Diocletian’s retirement from his position as Roman Emperor, in 305. It was all but abandoned after the Romans withdrew from the Dalmatian coast until it was occupied by locals in the seventh century as they sought protection from marauding barbarians behind its massive walls. The many narrow streets and lanes (one of which we found to be named after John’s distant cousin Ipsod) contain a maze of shops and homes, however many of its important original features remain, including the original entrances, a tiny Christian church from the fifth century and the Cathedral of St Duje. The main part of the Cathedral, Emperor Diocletian’s Mausoluem, was constructed at the same time as the palace, and the end of the third century (making it even older than the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul) and is virtually intact today. The Bell Tower was built in 1100, although it was modified in 1908 and many of the original Romanesque sculptures were removed. An amazing sight, in the cathedral museum, is a sarcophogas, from the year 305, containing bones of St Anastasius, and the Evangelurium Spalatense (presumably a bible) written between 580 and 600.
As most of the attractions in Split close during the afternoon, we jumped on a bus for the little coastal town of Trogir, some forty minutes away. Trogir is a walled town from Roman times and its Cathedral of St Lawrence is a beautiful old building with a bell tower which we climbed to gain commanding views of the town. Then back to Split, a really good look at the cathedral, then back to the hotel for a spa and a scrumptious pizza dinner at a nearby restaurant.
This morning we caught an early flight to Rome and our now ensconced in the Hotel Centro, close to the Piazza del Republica. We’ve just come back from a tour of the Catacombs, where the early Christians met in secret and buried their dead (prior to the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire). There are seventeen kilometres of catacombs under Rome and at one time they held 150,000 bodies. The passageways are just wide enough to walk through and the walls are lined with cavities, just large enough to hold the body of an adult or child, which was wrapped in a white shroud for interment. This particular catacomb contains an underground church, which is still largely intact, and frescoes on the walls and ceilings.There are four underground levels. We then visited the Basilica of St John of Lateran , which is the true home of the Bishop of Rome and in fact has primacy over St Peter’s. It is an awe-inspiring building and is said to house parts of the skulls of St Peter and St Paul inside silver statues and a relic from the table of the Last Supper. Then a look inside a smaller church (Scala Santa), where pilgrims ascend the steps on their knees, and finally the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore , another imposing edifice, with a ceiling adorned with 1,000kg of gold (given by Queen Isabella of Aragon towards the end of the fifteenth century) and which is said to contain a piece of the manger where Christ was born .
Tomorrow – more of Rome.
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