I left off part I of this post in the middle decades of the 1800s as Split’s Riva–its classically Mediterranean waterfront promenade–was undergoing an amazing transformation. By the end of the nineteenth century the Riva had become a place for trendy cafes, opulent hotels, and leisurely strolling. Though those posh perambulators were gradually taking over, for centuries it was the merchants and their maritime commerce that had defined the Riva.
The rough-and-tumble life of the sailors began to be pushed out under Austrian rule. In 1835 what’s thought to have been the first hotel opened on the Riva, mainly to house Austrian army officers as well as Italian businessmen. Though most travelers still arrived to the Riva by boat, some started to come via one of the surest signs of nineteenth-century progress: the Austrians built a railroad line right down to the harbor. As much as the railroad symbolized the change that had come to Split, it actually caused the demolition of another such symbol. In 1825 a wooden theater had been built at the southeastern end of the Riva, which hosted hosted balls, musical evenings, comedies, operas, and other performances. Much as the arrival of the first cinema ninety years later, this theater showed how Split was becoming just a bit more prosperous and bourgeois.
What both the theater and the railroad replaced tells a lot about how the waterfront was changing. For centuries, one of Split’s most important, beautiful, and traditional structures sat at the southeastern corner of Diocletian’s Palace. This was the famous lazaretto, formerly located on a spot where today you can find Split’s outdoor market. A lazaretto was a quarantine facility for merchants and their goods. Merchants and sometimes sailors would have to spend 21 or 42 days in quarantine, until it was determined that that they and their goods were clean.
Why so much caution? The reason is that for several centuries Split was perhaps the single most important transit point for commerce between the Ottoman Empire and western Europe. From roughly the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the Turks ruled the lands not far from Split, just over the mountains. The Turkish caravans, sometimes numbering as many as 500 horses, bearing wares from all over the vast territory of the Ottoman Empire, would regularly come over the mountain pass and down to the harbor. Split, as part of the great Venetian Empire, linked these Ottoman caravans to the rest of Europe through Venice’s maritime might.
To house all these caravans and far-flung travelers and sailors, in the 1600s the Venetians built on the Riva what became one of the largest and reputedly most beautiful lazaretti in all of Europe. I would love to have seen the Riva in those days, teeming with exotic goods and people from distant lands. Reading travelers’ descriptions from the time, the Riva really sounds to have been a meeting point between East and West. Even into the early 1800s, as tourism grew, travelers from England and Germany were captivated by the still-noticeable influence of Turkish merchants on the Riva.
This image of 1757, with turbaned Turks in the foreground, offers a glimpse of what that vanished world might have looked like:
The Riva of this drawing is still mostly a workaday place, crowded with commerce, the palace’s facade obstructed by a number of buildings that had grown onto it like barnacles. These sort of structures typically fulfilled a variety of functions. Some were offices for managing the harbor activity, some were houses, and in 1786 an establishment run by the Italian Filippo Frezza opened its doors. Known as the “Bottega di caffe e da scalitera,” it was the Riva’s very first cafe and pastry shop.
Over the centuries, the Riva has in fact many times has been crowded by buildings. Usually they would last a few decades, then be cleared… only for more of the same to spring up not long afterwards. The conclusive clearing, though, was undertaken by the French General Marmont in the first decade of the 1800s, when Napoleon had taken control of Dalmatia. Marmont ordered that the palace’s monumental facade be preserved from clutter, thereby establishing the tradition that holds today. He also contributed to the Riva in another way, by dismantling several of the fortified towers the Venetians had built along the harborfront and using the stone as landfill to widen the Riva.
Until Marmont and then the Austrians came along, the look and life along the Riva had changed relatively little over the centuries. One custom that long persisted was the wood market. Various travelers remarked on this picturesque and characteristic slice of Split life. During the winters, merchants would come in from the islands (some of which had fairly extensive forests) to sell wood. Women, usually from the higher villages toward the mountains, would come down into the city to buy the wood, then haul it on their backs all the way back up to their villages. These women, heavily laden with bundles of wood, were apparently quite a sight.
Still, though, the Riva wasn’t all about commerce. It has also almost forever been a place for celebrations. In centuries past, when circuses came to town they would often make their home down by the harbor. In the Middle Ages, church holidays often centered on the Riva. For Christmas, Easter, and All Saints great processions would take place, marching along the waterfront to the cathedral of St. Duje inside the palace. On great feast days, all the town’s elite, from the church officials through the noble families, would take part. Sometimes the harbor would even be transformed with boats for fireworks or music out on the water.
The most important celebration along the Riva, though–and in fact the most important celebration in Split itself–takes place in connection with the feast day of St. Duje, the town’s patron saint. Though the party, known as Sudamja, lasts several days, the culmination is 7 May, St. Duje’s day. Since medieval times, the festivities have included fireworks, footraces, pole climbing, regattas, and even an unusual game kind of like bingo. It really is Split’s biggest blow-out, and if you can ever manage to be in the area in early May, you shouldn’t miss it. Here’s a picture of some Sudamja fireworks with the Riva all lit up:
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So though a lot has changed on the Riva in even just the past few years (like the botched 2007 renovation), some things, as always, stay the same. Thanks to the surviving facade of his palace, even Emperor Diocletian might still recognize the Riva, some 1700 years later. Though back in his time, his palace was the waterfront. Nowadays, he might not be so happy about having to share his strolling space–but share he would, since the Riva belongs to everyone in Split, as the city’s magnificent front yard, one of the most magnificent public spaces in the Mediterranean world.
Those who read Croatian may want to check out Goran Borcic’s article on the Riva, which served as my main source.
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