I worry that my previous post about Split made it look a bit too ancient Roman. It’s not, really. It’s very much a medieval town that just happened to sprout from a Roman palace.
Even in spots like this, where the original Roman construction is visible, there’s always a medieval structure in, on, or next to it. People in the dark ages don’t seem to have been too concerned about historic preservation (24 May 2018).
This is part of Diocletian’s Palace too, but you’d hardly guess it (24 May 2018).
There are some very narrow medieval streets that have sprouted in there, which make for fun exploring, again provided you’re not in a hurry to get anywhere.
28 May 2018
This one’s not for the broad-shouldered (24 May 2018).
The medieval inhabitants of Diocletian’s Palace particularly liked to renovate the palace walls, apparently.
Let’s brick up those windows and throw in some crenellation (28 May 2018).
Those boarded-up windows belong to a convent that once nested here above the main gate of the palace (25 May 2018).
And when you can’t build in the walls, build right next to them (25 May 2018).
Maybe the best example of medieval structures grafted on to the Roman palace is the landmark Venetian bell tower in the center of the structure, towering over Diocletian’s mausoleum-turned-cathedral. Normally I don’t pay admission for sights — I’m home-scouting, not touristing, after all — but I had to climb up. This view was worth the price of admission.
Up I go (25 May 2018).
The Venetians who controlled Split for several centuries fortified palace to defend against the Ottoman Turks. But more importantly for them, they fortified themselves against any uprisings by the local population. They could hole up in the bell tower here and fire arrows down on any looters (25 May 2018).
25 May 2018
25 May 2018
25 May 2018
But enough of Diocletian’s Palace. Well, OK, one more photo:
Good segue photo for going from the palace to the medieval city (25 May 2018).
The medieval city that surrounds the palace is a fun place to people-watch, and, if your travel budget allows (mine didn’t always), to eat lunch while doing so.
The Venetians weren’t content with just one bell tower, naturally. This one sits just outside the main gate of the palace. The local birds love to flock here (24 May 2018).
A little lunch here in Trg Republika, not far from the palace (24 May 2018).
My favorite square in Split’s old city, Narodni Trg. The people-watching here is almost as good as on the Riva. I watched for an hour and a half as a staggering amount of ice cream was consumed around me. Naturally, after lunch, I joined in on the consumption (25 May 2018).
Even outside the old town, many streets in Split are narrow, winding, and atmospheric, such as those near my apartment. Here too I’d see locals of all ages, from grandparents down to babies, both living life and watching it go by.
Each time I left my apartment, I’d take a different one of those alleys to see if it would lead down to the street toward the Riva. Sometimes they did, and other times they dead-ended (25 May 2018).
28 May 2018
I overheard plenty of Croatian radio while in Split. In fact, as I write this post (on board a Croatian long-distance bus, the first bus I’ve ridden on my journey so far with both fast free wi-fi and a power outlet), I’m listening to a Croatian radio station. They play a strange mix of mostly moldy-oldie classic rock (when was the last time you heard ABBA’s “Waterloo” on the radio? I heard it 45 minutes ago) and Croatian(? Given my lack of knowledge of Slavic languages, they could be in Russian. Or Portuguese.) songs that vary wildly in quality. I wonder if radio stations here were playing some of those songs back in the ’70s during communism. It’s possible — Tito was always a little more open to the West than the rest of the Communist Bloc.
On my second-last full day in Split, I got lost trying to take a shortcut through the old town (you’d think I would have learned by now. But my experience is, it’s only the big mistakes that you only make once. The small mistakes, you make over and over again.) and I stumbled across a museum called “Froggyland.”
Can you believe my Rick Steves guidebook made no mention of this attraction? (27 May 2018).
I grabbed a brochure and was back the next day, once I’d hung my clothes up on the clothesline to dry. Unfortunately, Froggyland does not allow photography, so all I can show you are the promotional materials.
A big part of the museum’s charm are the clunky English captions for each diorama. Generally the level of English in Croatia is very high, but I think Froggyland predates the post-communist improvement in English education here (28 May 2018).
Froggyland is a one-room museum that consists of about 20 intricate dioramas of taxidermy frogs posed in human-like settings. An eccentric Hungarian taxidermist sacrificed 507 frogs between 1910 and 1920 to create all of the displays.
Each diorama has a different theme, using dozens of dead frogs to depict some aspect of daily life in the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There’s a “holiday at the lake” diorama featuring a frog family taking a family portrait, frog fishermen netting fish (actual formaldehyde-stuffed anchovies), frogs drinking wine directly from the bottle, frogs taking a nap on a grassy bank, and a frog gypsy encampment. There’s a diorama of a county fair where, in one corner, there’s a depiction of a game of tug-of-war between two teams of frogs in which the rope has just snapped, sending frogs flying backward in both directions, with the embalmed frogs frozen in place (I asked the girl at the admission booth how it was done) by wires so cleverly that it really looks exactly like their little froggy limbs are being splayed in all directions as they tumble down.
And, it’s called “Froggyland.” I mean, even with the name alone, who could resist visiting? (28 May 2018).
The best part is that the creator didn’t gloss over the more embarrassing aspects of life. In the county fair scene, there’s a frog couple having sex behind a haystack. In the village festival diorama, a frog husband and wife are sitting on a bench together, but the wife is holding hands with another frog behind her husband’s back (I had to read the English explanation for that one; otherwise it’s impossible to tell which frogs are supposed to be men and which are women). In a couple of different scenes, a frog is peeing against the side of a building. In the schoolhouse diorama, some of the “students” are leaning way back in their chairs, others are whapping each other with rulers, and a frog father is entering the classroom, dragging his hooky-playing son by the ear. And seemingly every scene has a band of drunken frogs spilling wine or beer on the ground.
Who’d have thought a collection of 507 taxidermy frogs could be so charming? And, in all fairness, there’s some real historical value in these depictions of daily life a century ago, even if they are acted out by frogs. Zany stuff like this endears me to places and the people who create them. Two thumbs up, Froggyland and Split!