Are There Others in the World? — Split, Croatia

The write ups of Diocletian’s Palace on travel forums reflect the contradiction of a main tourist attraction that both doesn’t exist and is always open. After looking up the Palace on online maps and searching for opening hours and entry fees, we figured out that Split’s main attraction is…Split. There is no actual palace.

The Palace is instead a set of ruins from 305 AD that daily life has taken over. Now filled with hotels, shops, restaurants and a fish market or two, the Old Town of Split is the Palace, walled in with three main gates for access: Golden, Silver and Iron, all of which are made of stone. Well, the arches are stone, presumably the original gates were made of namesake materials. The Golden gate is presided over by the enormous statue of Grgur Ninski, a medieval bishop who brought Catholic masses to the masses by translating them from Latin to Croatian. He looks like a giant wizard, which I suppose is fitting enough. The fourth wall of the grounds doesn’t have a gate as such as Diocletian wanted swim up (boat up) access so built his palace, really his retirement home, right on the water. Reclaimed land on that side has become the modern day Riva promenade.

Among the warren of streets, there is a central square with cathedral, bell tower and men dressed up as centurions in a classier, European version of Times Square superheroes. Walking away from that square we turned down a side street and passed a cafe. I heard my name just as a friend from Vancouver walked up beside me. We’d recently realized we’d be in Croatia at the same time but expected it to be a few days away in a different city. So now I can take credit for introducing her to Froggyland.

Type “off the beaten path” along with any city into Google and do whatever comes up — in Split it was Froggyland. A tragedy that photos were prohibited, words can’t do it justice, but you can see some pictures on their site, froggyland.net. A hundred years ago, a Hungarian taxidermist caught 507 frogs in his local swamp, and over 10 years stuffed and made little dioramas of them in human situations: frogs playing poker; frogs on parallel bars; frog musicians playing songs for drunk frog brothers; and with greatest irony, frogs doing the high jump. 507 frogs. 507. It’s bizarre (frogs shackled and tortured in a frog inquisition) and amusing (a frog classroom with frog students whacking each other over the head with rulers, and bored frogs with their heads in their flippers).

The Hungarian was a taxidermy legend. There are no seams so he deboned, stuffed and wired them internally though their mouths, without cutting them open. Modern taxidermists are agog. The best part was when the attendant introduced the exhibit with great pride, “This is the largest collection in the world!” My sister paused and asked gently, “Are there, uh, others in the world?”

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