Old Town Split and the Mestrovic Sculpture Gallery

Sunday, October 18

We spent Sunday in Split, a town of about 200,000. The Roman emperor Diocletian, a Croatian native, ruled 30 years at the end of the third century. He retired to a palace he had built on the ocean in Split. In the middle ages, the palace became a fortified town. These photos are from the original palace basement and the vibrant town that still lives on top.







Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic built his home in Split and gave it to the city as a museum for his work.The works of this Croatian sculptor are in museums around the world. A number are displayed in his former home in Split.  My favorites were "Compassion" (on the left) and "Hope."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Exploring the Ancient Treasures of the Mediterranean Region

Image
Since my undergraduate days as a history major, I have been drawn to the history of the places I visit.  Thus, one of the most interesting aspects of Mediterranean travel for me is learning about the ancient civilizations of these lands.  It is a treasure trove of ruins, of artifacts, of history, and of peoples.  There were the Minoans, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Romans, the Venetians, the Byzantines, and the Ottomans.  Each of these cultures has left traces of itself in various parts of the Mediterranean region, and sometimes the traces of one provided the foundations for another.   For example, the ancient amphitheater in Taormina, Sicily was first built in the third century BC as a Greek theatre.  Greek plays were presented on the stage.  While watching, audiences could enjoy the spectacular views of the ocean in the distance.  About six hundred years later, Roman conquerors converted the theater into an amphitheater wher...
Read more

Our Excellent European Adventure, 1970 Style

Image
  I love to travel.   Perhaps the itch to be on the move is something I was born with (my mother wrote in my baby book that I wanted to go with anyone who was “going bye-bye”), or perhaps it developed through childhood experiences.   My family moved every few years when I was growing up, and Dad always took two-weeks off for an annual family vacation.   We went to national parks, camped in the mountains, or visited relatives who lived across the country (from California to Connecticut).   The most memorable of those family vacations was a road trip from Texas, across the southern states, through the Smoky Mountains, to Washington, D.C., and then on to New York City for the 1964 World’s Fair.   We returned via a more northerly route.   By the time we got back to Texas, we had traveled through at least sixteen states. An even grander adventure was the three month excursion around Europe that I undertook in the fall of 1970.   I was only twenty but...
Read more

Polar Explorations

Image
 Scott and I recently returned from an expedition to the Canadian Arctic and Greenland.  Throughout, we found ourselves remembering our previous expedition to the other pole, Antarctica.  Several friends have indicated they wanted to read about our Arctic trip, which caused me to realize that I hadn’t written about the expedition we took to Antarctica in December, 2018.  So, this blog reports on both of those trips. Antarctica Expedition Map Greenland and Canadian Arctic Expedition Map Both of our polar expeditions were on small ice-rated expedition ships that carried between 150 and 200 passengers.  We booked our Antarctica expedition through Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) which sailed on a Quark ship, the Ocean Diamond.  It was an older ship, serviceable, but definitely not luxurious.   Quark's Ocean Diamond The trip north was on a new luxury expedition ship, built during the Covid pandemic by Crystal Cruises.  When that company went bankr...
Read more