Roman Croatia

Roman Croatia belonged to two different worlds. Istria, in the north-west, was part of Italy itself: Augustus made it, with the Veneto, the tenth region of Roman Italy, Venetia et Histria, with its capital at Aquileia. Beyond the Arsia river, the region’s eastern boundary, began the province named after the Dalmatae, an Illyrian people of the central Adriatic coast. The Romans fought three Illyrian wars in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC; Octavian campaigned inland in 35–33 BC, and after the great revolt of AD 6–9 the old province of Illyricum was divided, leaving Dalmatia as a province stretching from the Adriatic deep into the Balkans.

Its capital was Salona, near Split, one of the largest cities of the late Empire, and the emperor Diocletian, who was born there, built his retirement palace six kilometres away. That palace became the town of Split when refugees from Salona moved inside its walls in the 7th century, which is why it still stands. In Istria, the colony of Pola, today’s Pula, kept an amphitheatre whose outer wall survives complete, a temple of Augustus and an honorary arch; Poreč keeps its Roman street plan and an early Byzantine basilica famous for its mosaics. Inland, the legions guarded the river crossings from fortresses such as Burnum on the Krka and Tilurium on the Cetina.

This page lists the sites we have documented so far, from the great monuments of Split and Pula to smaller towns and forts in the Dalmatian hinterland.