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THE ARTS SOCIETY TOURSEXPLORE CROATIASingle traveller specialist Just You offers several tours of Croatia. Its fully escorted ‘Croatia and the Makarska Riviera’ tour features the historic towns of Split, Zadar and Dubrovnik, plus a boat trip to the lovely islands of Hvar and Brac. Optional visits include Krka National Park or beautiful Mostar over the border in Bosnia Herzegovina. Alternatively, considera festive break during the six-day ‘Christmas in Croatia’. 'Croatia and the Makarska Riviera' tour8 days from £1,089justyou.co.ukor call 01858 581608quoting 'The Arts Society'the statue’s shiny big toe for good luck.When the Avars sacked and destroyed Salona in the mid-seventh century, its surviving population took refuge in the palace ruins – and never left. Instead the palace’s newfound inhabitants built homes within its shell, making use of the plentiful building materials at hand, in the form of stone from various plundered palace buildings. As a result, the palace effectively became the fabric of the modern city itself – a living ruin, continually inhabited for over 1,700 years. A walk through the palace’s labyrinthine cobbled streets and tiny alleys reveals traces of the city’s rich multilayered past, alongside chic cafés and boutiques, with laundry fluttering overhead.Those visiting the palace today usually enter from the south – the ferry terminal, railway and bus stations are all on that side. From the waterfront area, an entrance ducks down beneath the palace into the Podrum – an extensive and extremely impressive system of vaulted underground chambers, originally filled with rubble and waste from the palace above, but now excavated and restored.Emerging from the Podrum into the palace interior brings you into the peristyle – an open courtyard surrounded by colonnades, at the centre of what was once the imperial quarters. Immediately to the east of this stands an octagonal building, which Diocletian had built as his own mausoleum. Given this emperor’s record for persecuting early Christians, he would no doubt have been somewhat unimpressed to learn that his final resting place would in the seventh century become a cathedral (which in an ironic twist is dedicated to St Domnius, who was martyred by Diocletian). These days the cathedral is a favourite wedding spot with an exquisite interior – small, hushed and surrounded by Romanesque carving – and on Saturdays you can often see newly-weds posing for photos outside its doors.Hidden down an alley on the opposite side of the peristyle is the baptistery, converted from a Temple of Jupiter. Here you’ll find an 11th-century baptismal font with pre-Romanesque carvings, and an Egyptian granite sphinx that once guarded Diocletian’s mausoleum.Just as the Delmatae, the Illyrian tribe conquered by the Romans in this area and Salona’s original inhabitants, left their legacy (the region of Dalmatia is named after them), so too has this palace. In 1757, the Scottish architect Robert Adam visited Split, and his drawings of the palace informed what was to become the Adam Style – and thus neo-classical architecture on both sides of the Atlantic.IMAGES: SHUTTERSTOCK61The Arts Society ReviewAutumn 2017TRAVEL ADVERTORIAL