Next we went to Diocletian's palace and did the Rick Steves self-guided tour. It was very interesting. We started in the "basement" and worked our way up. The Emperor Diocletian had this palace built in only 11 years. 2000 slaves died in the process. It was his retirement home, he lived here from 305-313 A.D. After his death, the palace fell into disrepair. Then in the 7th century, Slavs escaping their own destroyed cities fled to the abandoned palace and set home. Over the next 13 centuries, the palace was remodeled and added on to (sounds like my house!) numerous times. It became a walled city, where people live and work to this day.
Some of the many changes are notable. Diocletian hated christians, and tortured and killed many. His grand mausoleum is now the tiniest cathedral in all of christendom. It is called St. Dominus, after the bishop he tortured and killed. It is very ornate and has a very small, macabre museum that contains many relics. There are numerous heads of saints, covered with silver with portholes in the top so you can see the saints' scalps. There are other unidentifiable bits of saints and two glass ostuaries containing the bones of 2 other saints.
Diocletian considered himself a god, the son of Jupiter. His temple of Jupiter now houses a baptismal font with a sculpture by Croatia's most famous sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. The crypt is a Marian shrine. Ironic, the very people he persecuted now use his sacred sites as their own. As for Diocletian, nobody knows where he is.
After a delicious lunch, we boarded our bus and headed south.
No comments:
Post a Comment