One of the most amazing books written in the 20th century is Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. She wrote it just before the beginning of WWII. It was published in 1940. It's about a trip she and her husband make through Yugoslavia. It's a huge book, over a thousand pages. She mixes history, politics, economics, traveler's notes, and personal anecdotes in a way bloggers only dream about. She's opinionated and some of the things she says seem incredibly dated now. But she's insightful and writes with so much engagement with the places she's looking at and a sharp analysis of how Europe is coming to war.
She talks about Diocletian in the section on Dalmatia. He was a Dalmatian boy who went to Rome and made good. He rose to be a general and then they made him emperor. He ruled from age for to age 60, retired in one piece, and moved back home to Dalmatia where he built this palace and died ten years later.
West wrote, "It is not, of course, remarkable as an example of Roman architecture. It cannot hold a candle to the Baths of Caracalla, or the Forum, or the Palantine. But it makes and extraordinary revelation of the continuity of history. Once passes through the gate that is squeezed between the rubbisheries on the quayside straight into antiquity. . . . the vistas have been filled in with people. Rather less than one-fifth of the population of Split, which numbers forty-four thousand, lives in the nine acres of the palace precincts; but the remaining four-fifths stream through it all day long because the passages which pierce it from north the south and east to west are the most convenient ways to the new parts of the town from the harbour."
This is still true and there's a huge market on the east side of the market.
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