Split UNESCO

heritage The Roman Emperor Diocletian spent his declining years in an enormous palace that he had built near his birthplace, Aspalthos, in Dalmatia. With the passing centuries the original architecture of the palace has been altered, but the people of the city, later called Spalato, and then Split, were able to use the structure of the palace, damaging it as little as possible, under Byzantine, Venetian and Austro-Hungarian rule. Thus, a harmonious city came into being within the Roman walls. The peristyle of the palace, Diocletian's mausoleum, Jupiter's temple, the colonnades along the streets, Early Croatian churches, Romanesque houses, the gates of Andrija Buvina and architectural works by Juraj Dalmatinac have remained in a good state. A small temple rises opposite the mausoleum, probably dedicated to Jupiter, turned into the baptistery in the early Middle Ages. Only the closed part of the temple (cella) with a richly decorated portal has been preserved; the interior is roofed with a barrel coffered vault. The baptismal font was framed with stone plates in the 19th century, decorated with " pleter " - interlacery ornamentation (the central plate represents a figure of a Croatian ruler on the throne). The baptistery features the sarcophagus of Ivan Ravenjanin (following the tradition of the first archbishop of Split) from the 7th century and the statue of John the Baptist (Ivan Mestrovic). A Renaissance sarcophagus (1533) is in front of the baptistery. The foundations of the building in front of the baptistery contain a stone arch with the astragal motif (7th c.), the oldest known monument of mediaeval Split.