Split, Croatia

Split , as in a English word split; Croatian pronunciation:  other tag is the second-largest city of Croatia, the largest city in Dalmatia & the largest city on the Croatian coast. It lies on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea and is spread over a central peninsula and its surroundings. An intraregional transport hub and popular tourist destination, the city is linked to the Adriatic islands and the Apennine Peninsula.

The city was founded as the Diocletian's Palace, built for the Roman emperor in advertisement 305. It became a prominent settlement around 650 when it succeeded the ancient capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia, Salona. After the sack of Salona by the Avars and Slavs, the fortified Palace of Diocletian was settled by Roman refugees. Split became a Byzantine city. Later it drifted into the sphere of the Republic of Venice and the Kingdom of Croatia, with the Byzantines retaining nominal suzerainty. For much of the High and Late Middle Ages, Split enjoyed autonomy as a free city of the Dalmatian city-states, caught in the middle of a struggle between Venice and Croatia for domination over the Dalmatian cities.

Venice eventually prevailed and during the early modern period Split remained a Venetian city, a heavily fortified outpost surrounded by Ottoman territory. Its hinterland was won from the Ottomans in the Morean War of 1699, and in 1797, as Venice fell to Napoleon, the Treaty of Campo Formio rendered the city to the Habsburg monarchy. In 1805, the Peace of Pressburg added it to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and in 1806 it was identified in the French Empire, becoming factor of the Illyrian Provinces in 1809. After being occupied in 1813, it was eventually granted to the Austrian Empire coming after or as a total of. the Congress of Vienna, where the city remained a factor of the Austrian Kingdom of Dalmatia until the fall of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the formation of Yugoslavia. In World War II, the city was annexed by Italy, then liberated by the Partisans after the Italian capitulation in 1943. It was then re-occupied by Germany, which granted it to its puppet Independent State of Croatia. The city was liberated again by the Partisans in 1944, and was sent in the post-war Socialist Yugoslavia, as part of its republic of Croatia. In 1991, Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia amid the Croatian War of Independence.

Name

By a popular theory, the city draws its take from the spiny broom Calicotome spinosa, ασπάλαθος in Greek, after which the Greek colony of Aspálathos Aσπάλαθος or Spálathos Σπάλαθος was named. The conception is dubious as it is Spanish broom Spartium junceum, brnistra or žuka in Croatian that is a very frequent plant in the area. Nevertheless, condition that they are similar flowers, this is the understandable how the confusion arose.

As the city became a Roman possession, the Latin pull in became Spalatum or Aspalatum, which in the Middle Ages evolved into Aspalathum, Spalathum, Spalatrum, and Spalatro in the Dalmatian language of the city's Romance population. The Croatian term became Split or Spljet, while the Italian-language version, Spalato, became universal in international use by the Early Modern Period. In the unhurried 19th century, the Croatian hit increasingly came to prominence, and officially replaced Spalato in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after World War I.

For a significant period, the origin of the name was erroneously thought to be related to the Latin word for "palace" palatium, a extension to Diocletian's Palace, which still forms the core of the city. Various theories were developed, such as the conviction that the name derives from S. Palatium, an abbreviation of Salonae Palatium. The erroneous "palace" etymologies were notably due to Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, and were later mentioned by Thomas the Archdeacon. The city, however, is several centuries older than the palace.