Moonlit Wanderings in Split

SPLIT, CROATIA, March 15, 2022 In normal times, Split, Croatia’s second-largest city, would have been bustling with tourists feasting and drinking their fill within Split’s 1,700 year old walls. But Covid had killed the tourist trade in 2021, and the recovery was barely underway as I slipped through the Western Gate of Diocletian’s Palace just after dark on the March 15th, the Ides of March.

The stone beneath my feet—polished by seventeen centuries of footsteps—gleamed under the full moon that hung like a lantern above the Adriatic.

The narrow passages that typically are teeming with tourists belonged only to me on that night. And perhaps to a few ghosts as well. From somewhere, the scent of lavender and salt mingled with the ancient stone. My footsteps echoed against walls that had witnessed empires rise and fall, whispered secrets of Byzantine generals, Venetian merchants, and Habsburg nobles.

I paused in the Peristyle, the central square of the former imperial residence. Moonlight cascaded down the Temple of Jupiter and spilled across the sphinx that Emperor Diocletian had plundered from Egypt. The ancient creature, silent for millennia, seemed to watch me with knowing eyes, as if recognizing a fellow wanderer through time.

The city’s bars and restaurants, while nearly empty, were still inviting, and I felt at peace walking its streets.

A cat darted across my path and disappeared into a crevice—undoubtedly leading to some hidden chamber untouched since Roman times. I followed narrower and narrower passages, where medieval houses leaned intimately toward one another across alleyways barely wide enough for my shoulders.

On a side street just off the square, a waiter had put a red-clothed table and two chairs outside by the door, hoping perhaps that a romantic couple would brave the chill to sit down for meal, and in doing so might attract other diners. Instead, I sat at the table for a few moments and enjoyed a glass of good red wine, before continuing on my way, taking random turns as I ventured deeper and deeper into city’s labyrinth-like center. I passed by the ruins of the Jupiter temple again, and the wall that enclosed the Jewish ghetto, and someone’s laundry hanging across an alleyway.

My path descended through the palace’s substructures, chambers once filled with the emperor’s treasures, later with refuse, now with memory. The sea air grew stronger. I emerged unexpectedly onto the Riva promenade, where palm trees swayed against the night sky and the harbor’s waters reflected the constellation of stars.

For a moment, I felt suspended between centuries—Roman columns behind me, modern yachts before me, and all around the persistent whispers of a city that had reinvented itself again and again without ever truly changing.

A church bell marked the hour, its tone reverberating through stone and sea. I turned back toward the palace walls, knowing the night would soon surrender to dawn. But already, walking these moonlit stones, I felt I had glimpsed the city’s eternal soul—a city that breathes history with every shadow, every worn step, every salt-kissed breeze from the sea.

Some say cities never sleep. But Split doesn’t sleep—it remembers.