Diocletian

Walk through the Golden Gate of Diocletian's Palace in Split, Croatia, and you enter one of the strangest and most extraordinary places in Europe. Not a ruin. Not a museum. A neighborhood. Coffee shops occupy spaces where the emperor's servants once worked. Laundry hangs between columns that have stood for seventeen centuries. At the center of it all, a cathedral rises from what was once an emperor's mausoleum - the man's own tomb, converted to Christian worship within a century of his death, still functioning as a place of worship today. Diocletian's Palace is the only Roman imperial residence still fully inhabited. It has been continuously occupied for more than 1,700 years. The city of Split did not grow up around the palace. It grew up inside it. Understanding why that happened - and understanding the man who built it - turns a visit to Split from a pleasant afternoon into something considerably more interesting.