Split Golden Gate

About this audio guide

This guide to the Split Golden Gate traces the grandest entrance into Diocletian's retirement palace, from the emperor's own arrival around the year three hundred five to the centuries after Rome's collapse when refugees from Salona moved into the abandoned palace and this gate, too exposed to defend, was bricked up brick by brick. It follows the carved niches above the arch that once held statues of the tetrarchs, and the slow forgetting of which gate even faced north, before the wall finally came down in eighteen fifty-seven. Look up at the arch itself before stepping through into the square beyond.