Wednesday On The Marjan Peninsula

I spent Wednesday on the Marjan Peninsula part of Split.  Marjan is just a 5-minute walk from Diocletian's Palace and the Riva (which is the cafe-lined waterfront part of the Palace along the Adriatic).  I've seen Marjan called Split's Central Park.  I don't know if that really makes sense -- but it is an oasis nevertheless.

If you look on a map, you'll see that Split just has this Marjan Peninsula that juts out into the sea.  It's beautiful.  It's heavily wooded and green, but its perimeter gives way to scenic beaches.  The views in almost every direction are fantastic.  And there are some nice spots to see Croatian art.

A couple of Marjan's highlights are the two little museums dedicated to Ivan Mestrovic, who is I believe Croatia's most celebrated artist of the 20th Century.  (Mestrovic spend the last couple of decades of his life at Notre Dame in Indiana.  I believe he was exiled during WWII, and fled to the US.)  The Mestrovic Gallery holds a bunch of his sculptures.  The sculptures are nice, and the grounds are amazing.  It's worth a 30-minute stop if you're here.

A view from out one of the Gallery's windows.  

This sculpture of Job is I think one of Mestrovic's most famous.  

Here's the view as you're walking out of the Gallery.

Next stop was the Kastelet.  Mestrovic bought this property in 1939, and it holds his Life of Christ cycle (and that's about it).  It's right on the sea and a very tranquil spot with nice views.  The Crucifixion sculpture is impressive too.

I also found my way to one of the several beaches on Marjan.  The trees come right down the cliffs to the edge of the water.  That makes the beaches quite picturesque.  The beaches are not sandy -- they are pebble.  That might not have been the best design choice.  But, still, the beach I hit was a nice spot at which to take a rest.

On the way back down to Split proper, I stopped at Split's old Jewish cemetery.  Jews in Split were buried here until sometime in the mid-20th Century.  The city did not want to allow more burials here, so, at that point -- because the Split Jews had bought the land in something like the 1500s -- the city now gives Jews free burials in some of the other city cemeteries.  My friend Albert at the Synagogue told me that there are bodies here from as long ago as the 1470s.  I didn't see that.  The oldest one I saw was from the 1870s.  Interesting to look around in here.

And, on the way down from Marjan, you also get good views of the city.