The Sheila Variations

We left Trogir and headed on to Šibenik. Clouds now filled the sky. We learned later from Davor that part of the road between Zagreb and Split had closed this particular day, because the wind was too ferocious. By the time we got to Šibenik, dark grey clouds churned through the sky, and the wind was enormous, flags standing straight out, laundry on the wine sticking out parallel to the ground … Rachel and I were like, “Where did this COME from? And WHY did we not bring our down parkas to Croatia in September?”

Šibenik is an historic city on a little hill, facing a small river, where the only access to the larger sea is via a narrow channel (pointed out to us by Ante). When we arrived it seemed nearly deserted, probably because rain was coming and everyone had gone inside, and tourists weren’t really traveling that day because of the weather. Whatever the reason, when we walked into the main square of the old town, there were only a couple of people wandering around.

There are many reasons to come to Šibenik. It’s one of those important cities/ports along the Dalmatian coast that was captured, re-captured, captured again, over the centuries, by the Byzantine, Venetian, Austro-Hungarian empire. It’s always been a crucial port city. The main attraction is St. James Cathedral, which is what we had come to see.

Ante gave us the bare bones details, and you could feel his enthusiasm: “It is a masterpiece.”

I haven’t really written about the limestone of Croatia. By the end of the week, Rachel and I felt like minor experts in limestone, its qualities and properties, its uses, its look and feel, why it is good, why it is problematic as a building block… It was limestone-limestone-limestone all the way through Croatia. If you feel like asking “Is that limestone?” maybe stop, because 99 times out of 100 the answer will be “Yes.” Limestone has almost a soft crumbly look, and it doesn’t just reflect the light – it seems to absorb it into its pores, emitting a glow from within. There was no glow on this day in Šibenik, since the storm clouds were gathering.

St. James is one of the most important sites for Croatian Catholics. And small wonder. Ante was right. This limestone cathedral is a masterpiece. Unlike the other buildings we had seen, the limestone of St. James had no mortar in between the stones, no connective tissue. “The blocks are like Legos,” Ante said, “So you can take the whole thing apart and re-build it somewhere else if you want.” Extraordinary!

It wasn’t open so we couldn’t go inside. I love the thought that regular masses are still held in these historic buildings. That THIS is where you go to church on Sundays.

Ante had said to us, before he dropped us off, “Along the left side of the building are 72 human heads.”
“Wait, what?”
“Look for the human heads. Nobody knows who they are. But they think maybe they were the patrons who helped pay for the building. They think a couple of them are Popes.”

We were very intrigued. After wandering around in front of the building, we moved off to the left hand side, and immediately saw the line of human heads. You can actually see them in two of the photos of the Cathedral above. Once we got close to them, we realized how unique they all were. These are not idealized portraits. They are practically photographic in their specificity. They look like regular people, like this must have been what they actually looked like. If you ran into them today, you’d recognize them. Just amazing. Who are they?

If they were patrons and popes, that’s all very nice … but the EFFECT is somewhat grisly. It LOOKS like they were enemies of the church, decapitated heads on display as warnings to those who would follow in their footsteps.

The entire place is so rich with history, much of it unknown. The place exists. But it’s so old – 13th century, 14th century – that much of its history is lost to us. But look at it. What an amazing accomplishment of architecture. I feel fortunate we saw it on a grey day, the wind whipping our hair around, with a couple of other quiet people wandering around. Šibenik is a city but we didn’t see much of it. We hung out in that square, and then down on the marina, watching as these bruised clouds massed up above us, the clanking of the boats and buoys filling the air. The water was dark. The whole place was so beautiful I’d love to go back.

We drove back to Split through a rainstorm. I don’t think we went back the way we came. My memory is that we were driving through these back areas, with crumbling small villages, not much else going on, the trees bending all the way over in the wind, parts of the roads flooded. We pulled into a small restaurant perched on the side of the road – in the middle of what felt like nowhere – because it was time for lunch, and Ante wanted us to have lamb. He had the whole thing planned out. “We do fish one day, we do sausages another day, and now you have to have lamb.” We did not question him or resist. Who could resist Ante? He wanted us to get the full spectrum of Croatian cuisine. We were the only ones in the restaurant. The rain battered the windows. The meal was delicious.

This was the day the weather changed. It changed very quickly and very dramatically. It was a sunny summer morning when we set out to check out Salona, Trogir, and Šibenik – all north of Split. By the time we got to Šibenik, it was cold enough for coats and hats (none of which we brought). The weather changed as we drove from Trogir to Šibenik. We could see the storm approaching from the distance, the sky a bruised dark color, everything blotted out from the rain. Then we hit what felt like a wall of wind. Rain poured down. The car skittered over the road – we were in some real back roads areas – and I saw with my own eyes out the car window a tree crack in half and fall over.

But before that, all was sunny and summery. As we traveled out of Split, we passed through the suburbs, and then an industrial area, and we joined up with the biggest road we’d been on yet. On our way out, Ante pointed stuff out to us out the window. There were clouds in the sky, so the effects of cloud shadows and sunshine on the mountainous outskirts was stunning. As we passed by Salona – birthplace of Emperor Diocletian, just FYI – which is why he decided to “retire” in this area – Ante said, “There’s the Roman aqueduct … it still works.”

Three words: It still works.

The Romans, man.

They had many issues, were barbaric in many ways. But their engineering feats boggle the mind.

As we emerged from the more crowded areas, we could see the wall of mountains surrounding all of Split, and you really got the perspective of Split geographically – why Split was so important: protected by a wall of mountains on one side (which also, conversely, left it vulnerable to attack) and the sea on the other (ditto). In an indented ridge in the mountains, an enormous fortress – practically a city – came into view. Like a mirage. It was even more impressive than the fortress in Hvar.

“Ante, what is THAT.”

It is the fortress of Kils (Game of Thrones fans, take note – apparently it was used for some scenes in the series). It was built in medieval times by the Dalmatians, and was known as the “key to Dalmatia.” If you wanted to conquer the area, you had to take THAT monstrosity. Medieval Croatian kings lived there. It was a bulwark against repeat Ottoman invasions. (“Turk” was said in the same biting tone as the word “Serbs.”) We didn’t go up there but apparently ever since Game of Thrones aired, more and more tourists have been asking to visit the site. It’s really something to see. I mean, you look at it and all you see is State Power. Impressive, formidable, smart. The mountains rise up on either side. The ridge is like a small doorway, an entrypoint. But you need a “key” to get through, and that “key” is the fortress. Do not pass Go. You’ll have to come through us.

Trogir was another place I’ve wanted to see ever since I read Rebecca West’s book. It’s a small town on a small island, with two bridges leading in and out – one connects to the mainland and one connects to a nearby island. These are not big bridges. You can walk across them in one minute.

Protected by UNESCO, Trogir is a small gem, and representative of so much of what we saw in Croatia: over the centuries, the millennia, these places were settled by people, conquered by other people, conquered again, conquered again … and each phase left its mark architecturally. So you’re looking at striations of time, it’s visible in the place (Diocletian’s Palace being the most obvious example). Trogir goes back to the Greeks, in the centuries before Christ. Then came the Romans. As a Dalmatian city-state, they were ruled by the Venetians.

Like Dubrovnik, Trogir is a walled city. Even though it’s very small, it feels like it’s practically all churches. Steeples, clock towers, cathedrals, monasteries … all crammed inside these walls. There are also open-air markets, palaces, and a stunning loggia. And, of course, people actually live there. The squares are small, the “roads” narrow (no cars in the walled city). There are gates to get in and out. As you walk through Trogir, you are literally in a narrow corridor most of the time. You can barely see ahead of you 10 feet. It’s a true maze. We weren’t there long enough to get the lay of the land. By the time we left Split, I knew my way around the Palace, and knew which way I was going to get to the hotel, or to the sea … Trogir I was completely confused.

Right within the gates is the stunning Trogir Cathedral. It took five or six centuries to build, and so you can see different styles in the architecture as the years passed. The bell tower came last, I think, so you can see how it’s a more Gothic style.

It was a madhouse out front, but I did want to go look at the main portal. Dating from the 12th century, the door and whole gateway area is covered in elaborate carvings. If you know your Bible, you can figure out much of it. The carvings show stories from the life of Christ, but also stories from the Old Testament. It’s so crowded up there it’s almost like a Bruegel.

I mean, it’s a masterpiece.

We walked through Trogir, and I almost instantly lost my bearings. Which way was back? No idea. Can I go see the cathedral door again? No idea where it is. Which way is east? No clue. Ante took us through, pointing out the palaces, the Benedictine monastery, and the loggia … which I’ll get to in a second. You can see the Venetian influence in a lot of the architecture, elaborate, ornate, lots of pointy arches. Beautiful.

I loved the white-painted shutters here, closed. Someone’s bedroom hallway or something like that.

You walk through the city (it takes about 15 minutes) and you emerge from the other gate onto a long stone promenade, dotted with palm trees, ending in a gigantic blocky 15th-century fortress. Those Venetians, man. They were NOT KIDDING AROUND. I guess you don’t get to be an empire like that without knowing you need to pepper every single important place with something that looks like this.

An unbreakable WALL of windowless stone. Good times.

It was still hot and summery. Rachel and I wandered around in our “matching hats,” with no real plan of attack, just soaking up the beauty. We walked back through Trogir.

Now about the loggia. These are open structures with roofs, and incredible acoustics. Town meetings, community meetings were held in these places, group speakers, whatever. There was one in Diocletian’s Palace, and one time Rachel and I were walking by there, and it was filled with people, playing guitars, laughing, kissing, talking – it was like Washington Square Park, except it was a place that’s been there since before Christ. The loggia in Trogir is an absolute stunner. You get to it by ascending about 10 marble steps. There are these wild carvings on the wall. There were so many people crowded in there it had a kind of frenetic feeling – even more so than in Dubrovnik. Ten times worse. The time to come would be at 10, 11 at night! Try out those acoustics!

Here’s one of the carvings on the wall.

One of the treats was listening to an a capella group singing a couple of traditional Dalmatian songs. They set themselves up in the loggia, and do performances four times an hour or something like that. It was amazing. Unfortunately, this woman was gliding around in the front row with her phone on a selfie stick – and she planted herself in front of the singing group – with her BACK to them – filming herSELF with THEM in the background. They’re PERFORMING and this is what she is doing. It was so rude and disrespectful – not only to US – because her behavior meant any pictures we might want to take of them would include HER smiling vapid face – but also to THEM. You’re not even LISTENING to them perform. You are filming YOURSELF, with them in the background. Fascinating footage, lady. I’m sure your family back home will love it.

Honestly, I try not to complain about people. I spend the majority of my time in New York City. I have lots of practice cutting tourists slack. But this was some next-level bullshit.

Ante told us this whole area empties out in the winter months. All the islands, Korčula, Vis, Hvar, Trogir … the whole Dalmatian coast becomes a ghost town. Listen, I love people, and I was a tourist myself … but it would be nice to visit off-season! Our drive out of Trogir took us up the mountain. The switch-backs were insane. You could see the road snaking along the side of a cliff wall, and of course the roads were super narrow, and everyone drove at 60, 70 miles an hour. There was one car chugging along at 30 miles an hour, and everyone passed it (“That would be me if I were driving in Croatia,” I said, and Ante started laughing) … We climbed up and up, so high our ears started popping. Then Ante pulled over onto a little embankment. No guardrail. Nothing. And there we were, looking down on where we just were.

In that photo, it looks like Trogir is just part of the mainland, but it’s not. That little bridge I posted a picture of above connects the two. So really all you can see from that far above is a crowded cluster of red roofs and steeples.

Rachel: “Is it required that everyone have a red roof here?”

We were going over a mountain to then come back down to visit Šibenik, another seaside town. This is when the weather started to change. We were so high up we could see for miles in the distance. Ante pointed and said, “See? That’s rain.” The horizon covered in grey. We were still in the clear, but the sun had vanished, clouds lowering down, dark grey lines, creating amazing effects. Our entire time there it had been sunny, barely a cloud in the sky. We were really out in the wilds, small isolated villages, vast empty spaces and wind farms. Lots and lots of wind farms. Standing stark against the bruised stormy backdrop.

Rachel and I wandered around through Diocletian’s Palace. We bought gelato and sat on a little stoop, underneath a random Roman free-standing pillar. As you do. Then we bought some Split trinkets for family members. We had no schedule. We had hours of free time. We ended up going to an outdoor bar, shadowed by the Roman wall of the palace, and ordering big steins of frosty beer. So we had gelato and then beer, because we were on vacation.

Like Anne Shirley said in Anne of Green Gables, this place has “scope for imagination.”

Ante told us where to go to dinner, an old family place, traditional Croatian meal. It was outside the walls of the Palace, and he showed us on the map. We napped, showered, dressed, and set out.

Ante did not steer us wrong. It was a beautiful night, we had a delicious meal, wine. The waiter was solicitous, and told us what wines to drink. “No. You cannot have Chardonnay in Croatia.” We laughed about that for the rest of the trip. Croatian wines, people. I drank more in Croatia than I’ve drank in the last 5 years put together. Not to excess, but with every meal. We’d be like, “Oh look at that, it’s 11 a.m. and people are having wine.” But they do it right: Ante told us: “We have big lunch, small dinner.” I mean, that’s the way to go. We had zero processed food while we were there. It was fish, sausages, meat, salads, pasta. Bread and olive oil. Eggplant. Wine. I’m trying to implement this now that I’m home. We laughed so hard at dinner about our elevator confusion back in Dubrovnik that we were CRYING. We had been so jetlagged back then the humor of our joint confusion hadn’t really sunk in – but it hit us like a ton of bricks once we discussed some days later. Tears streamed down our faces.

Afterwards, we walked along Split’s gorgeous storied waterfront. The Palace loomed to our left, the water stretched out to the right, reflective, dark and beautiful. A lighthouse beam out on one of the points. It was basically a party down on the waterfront. People hanging out, a live band playing (they were doing covers of Banarama songs … a Shania Twain song … we were like, “Wait, what year is this?” Time is so fluid in Split, even the live band participated in it.) We had said a couple days earlier, “Let’s smoke a cigarette in Split.”

We bought a pack of cigarettes in a ceremonious fashion, plus a lighter, and we sat on the sea wall and smoked our cigarettes. It was merely a reminder of why I don’t smoke. We discussed afterwards, because, again, we were gigantic nerds. “How was your cigarette?” “I kind of have a headache.” “Yeah, me too.” “But that was fun though.” “Oh, totally.”

O’Malley cousins. On the loose.

We walked back to our hotel, going through the Palace, now emptied out of crowds. It was dark and quiet, people sitting and having wine at the little bars, but most of the shops closed. It was absolute and pure magic. Without the crowds, the Palace reveals itself in a different way. History looms in the foreground. It is easier to forget it was 2018. You feel the millennia in those walls.

We then created yet another Comedy of Errors trying to find what was labeled as the “rooftop terrace” in our hotel. We found ourselves huddled on what appeared to be a tiny roof, with an exhaust fan taking up one entire wall, and the terrace provided no view of the city or harbor, just the walls of buildings around us.

“Is this it?”
“Wait, hold the door open.”
“If we get locked out here …”
“Do you have your cell phone?”
“Yeah, but how would we call the front desk from our cell phones if we get locked out here.”
“They said there was a view?”
“But, like, there’s no view …”
“Is that door going to close shut if you let go of it?”
“I’m afraid.”
Rachel huddled down and tried to prop open the door with her tube of sunscreen … all as we staggered around surrounded by exhaust fans and walls of other buildings. Huh. Rooftop terrace. Okay. We were on a roof and it was indeed a terrace but …

We finally admitted defeat and went to bed.

We pulled off the ferry, and there we were standing on the waterfront in Split. It was the height of day, the sun blazed down. I tried to just calm the hell down, so I could absorb everything I could, be in the moment – take pictures, of course, but also be in the moment. (I felt that way the whole trip. Sometimes you just have to take a breath, calm down the buzz and momentum of travel, relax, so you can actually be present to the damn experience. At least I have to do that.) It was a madhouse on that waterfront: packed with crowds, with roaring huffing motorcycles, activity. There was a long building stretching down along the waterfront, with palm trees in front of it – and Ante pointed to it and said, “That’s Diocletian’s Palace.”

I stared at it, like, Wait, what? OKAY SHEILA FOCUS.

I had no idea it would look like that. I threw out my conception – based on years of reading about it and imagining it – and launched myself into absorbing reality. I highly recommend such an experience if you can swing it. It means you will have to staunchly AVOID photographs of the place you have always wanted to see, and that avoidance has to last years. So start now! I had somehow pictured it on a cliff. Wrong. I had also pictured it somewhat isolated. Wrong. And even though I KNEW the modern world had grown up around and within the Palace, I was still not prepared to see it so much a part of the city that cars were pulled up right against it, restaurants lined its front, etc. Ante pointed to the upper tier of the long building, stone, like a stage set, with blue sky peeking through the empty vacant windows. “That’s the Palace.” And, just like all the books said, perched on top of the walls, or peeking over them, were structures from a later date (but still from long long ago), stone “houses” and rooms, making the entire Palace a worm-hole through time, a place where past and far-past and Now all co-exist simultaneously.

The Palace is not a museum. You do not need to buy tickets to enter. You just walk in. It’s still a part of the city, with merchants and restaurants, shops, theatres, a strip joint, book stores … It never closes. It’s just THERE.

Ante did RIGHT by us, I can tell you that. He took us over to a little map of the Palace, so we could see what we were about to enter. The Palace was created with a big square wall around it (the “fort” element Ante mentioned in my first conversation with him), and each wall had a gate. Each gate had a different name (“Golden Gate” “Silver Gate”, etc.) Within those walls were huge structures, temples to Jupiter, his own quarters, an area that they think might have been a swimming/wading pool, etc. There were streets, passageways, etc. Ante took us through what was known as the basement door.

As Ante barreled us through the Palace, just to give us the lay of the land, providing historical context for many of the elements, he told us about what happened after Diocletian died, and the Roman Empire fell. The people who lived in the area didn’t leave. They continued to live in and around the Palace, building their own rickety shacks and buildings – some of which also remain, which is how you get this hallucinatory mix of eras. Like this:

Paraphrase of Ante’s speech as he took us around:

“The barbarians who lived here after did not know how to build anything right, so you can see the difference between the Romans and later. Diocletian persecuted Christians and so when the Christians arrived, they took what was his mausoleum and turned it into a church – there it is right there -”

“… and the Christians built a church over there too, over Diocletian’s quarters – but you can see how bad the construction is compared to the Romans. Not good.”

Ante made us see. So basically the early Christian tribes came and “disrespected” the man’s home by erecting Christian monuments over Roman monuments. Ante also told us as we came through the extraordinary basement that the barbarian tribes who moved in had dumped all their slop – and waste – down into this basement area. It was completely filled and not excavated until the 1950s. This was what was revealed when they finally cleared it all out:

So it’s an archeological site slash modern-Greenwich-Village-type neighborhood. People still live in there. You could see laundry hanging out to dry. Every nook and cranny is filled. The streets are this slippery … marble? … and at the end of every teeny alley you could see the wall of Diocletian’s Palace stretching up, sometimes with tiny slot-windows in them, showing the blue sky. It is one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever been. Everywhere I looked was some incongruity. That incongruity is the palace’s defining characteristic.

Ante showed us how a modern bank on one of the corners inside had one of the old columns of the palace coming through its lobby. So whoever came in after, from the Dark Ages to freakin’ yesterday, build AROUND the palace. We spent a couple days in Split, and we barely scratched the surface of all that was going on there. It was great, though, because our hotel was literally a one-minute walk away. So we could just go back for a quick nap, a shower, and then come back and wander around, go shopping, have a bite, whatever. Which is what we did.

There are big squares in the palace, lined with buildings. Ante told us which buildings were good, which ones were ugly. (I loved his tour guide style. “That building over there? Poured concrete. Pfft. Not good. Ugly.”) Here’s Ante, by the way.

Ante grew up in Split, so he kept running into friends. He was like the Mayor of Split. In one of the big squares is a statue of Renaissance-era Croatian poet Marko Marulić, done by Ivan Meštrović (a famous Croatian sculptor of the 20th century: we saw a lot of his stuff around, Ante would point it out. Ante loved Meštrović). Marko Marulić is credited with being the father of the Croatian Renaissance, and he hailed from Split. Here he is. His fingers are incredible, with big muscular knuckles, clutching his book.

Ante took us out of the Palace, through the Golden Gate (Zlatna Vrata), to point out how close our hotel was. We walked down a little side street and boom, there we were at the Zlatna Vrata.

This is natural light, just FYI. The gate truly is “golden.”

You can see the theatre nerds (God bless them, they’re everywhere) in gladiator costumes outside the gate.

The whole place is magic, but perhaps the most magic part is that the palace is not cut off from the surrounding community. If you went to college in Split, you could walk through it on your way to class, grab a coffee. You could sit there and study. You could stop by after work and have a drink. The palace has always been “open.” For almost 2,000 years. It remains open. So the Split residents are used to it. It’s part of their world, their backdrop. Like I’m sure the Coliseum is part of the world of those who live in Rome. Or, although not nearly as old, the Statue of Liberty is part of my everyday life. I see her every day on my commute. I’m not “over” her, but I’m certainly used to her presence.

My senses were on overload. I was so … happy. It takes me a while to even label the experience, and especially the kind I experienced in Split, since it’s so rare. Diocletian’s Palace … okay, so I’ve had a love affair with you in my head ever since I read Rebecca West’s travelogue of her trip through Yugoslavia. I said to myself, when I first read that 1,200 page book back in my 20s: “Okay, so Split, and that palace, I gotta see that one day.” I feel that way about so many places on the globe. I haven’t been anywhere. Well, I’ve been all over the United States, and I’ve been to Ireland many many times. But there are so many other places to see. Maybe this trip is a harbinger of things to come.