Split and a Dalmatian summer
The city where the island book began.
Split grew up inside a Roman palace. Diocletian built it to retire in; sixteen centuries later people still live within its walls, hanging laundry between columns and selling fish where emperors once walked.
For most travellers it is a transit point — the port from which the ferries leave for the Dalmatian islands. But it is worth a day of its own before the sea takes you onward: an espresso on the Riva, the cool of the cathedral, and a first taste of the slowness the islands will only deepen.