Jan 13 2008
Salona’s Roman Ruins with Sweet and Sour Pork
Its a laugh when Aussies or Yanks start talking about heritage. The moment we step out the door of our apartment we are breathing the same air Roman Emperor Diocletian (236 - 316) did 1 700 years ago.
To try an give Aklie some perspective we took him, with our friends, the Smalbys, to the Split Archaeological Museum and Salona, site of the 1st Century Roman city.
The Archaeological Museum, a 10-minute walk from Diocletian’s Palace, contains many artifacts found in the Palace; in Salona, which also happens to be Diocletian’s birthplace; and in the Dalmatian Greek colonies, including Starigrad on Hvar Island. The display is small and intimate. In the courtyard there are many large stone pieces, which quickly become boring. But inside are useful day-to-day objects of typical Roman families - perfume bottles, other beauty tools, jewelery, toys, trinkets and coins. It definitely beats the London’s British Museum and New York’s Metropolitan, as you can see the relics then in the same day visit where they were dug up.
Salona is 10kms from Split. Julius Caesar gave the town status of a Roman colony in 48 B.C. and it was finally destroyed by the Avars in 639. Don Frane Bulić oversaw most of the excavations at the end of the 19th Century. We had a picnic in front of the Basilica of Manastirine and then wandered through the ruins - the town’s churches, bath’s, protective walls, main gate and bridge over the Jadran River.
The ruins of Salona represent another missed opportunity for Split tourism. Very little excavation has been done since that completed by Bulić. A Roman city of 60 000 people, about 3 times the population of Pompei, still lies under derelict houses and vineyards. The ruins host no events or festivals and its very difficult for tourists to directly travel between Split and Salona on local buses.
The above picture is Roklan sitting on a carved, stone sarcophagus for a Roman child from the 1st or 2nd Centuries AD.
It seems every new Chinese restaurant in the former Yugoslavia is called Peking (see our previous post about New Year’s Eve in Slovenia). We’d heard about a restaurant that had just opened near Trogir and that’s where we ended up for dinner.
For those visiting Split, much more information about Diocletian’s Palace and Salona is given on our Evening Walking Tours.
