Split, Croatia (day 60) - March 7, 2023)

Kils Fortress

Day 60

From the ruins of Salona the day before, we could see some sort of fort up in the hills a little ways away. Turns out the place is called Klis Fortress. It was built in a key location, with a view of the sea below and acting as a barrier to the mountain pass and the mainland beyond. It was said, whoever controlled the fortress, controlled the entire area. Illyrians first had some sort of outpost atop the rocky hill, but very little has been preserved from that time period. The rulers and shape of the building changed many times throughout history, dating back to at least the 3rd century BC. The Romans took it over from the Illyrians, who lost it to the Barbarians, who lost it to the Byzantines. The Avars and Slavs who invaded the area, destroying Salona, took control of the fortress next. It was held for some time by a number of different Croat dukes and kings before falling to the Ottomans. The list of different rulers and nations/kingdoms goes on a ways after all that.

What is left today is quite impressive. There are a number of different gates, each on higher ground than the previous, that attackers would have needed to break through in order to reach the heart of the fortress. To make things more difficult, three sides of the fortress are built along the sides of steep rocky cliffs.

Hope this crooked picture annoys you as much as it does for me :D Maybe I will edit it and upload the corrected version one day :)

We made our way down to the modern day city of Salona, now called Solin, for lunch at a place called, “Street Food 21210”. It is a nice modern restaurant where I ate a nice grilled tuna steak. I still am not very good a taking pictures of my food. I prefer to eat the food once it arrives, not pause and take pictures :D. Someone my size can’t afford to wait to eat for fear of strong gusts of wind :)

Joel and I walked down the street after lunch to see what was in the area. There was a nice park close by which had a church and bell/clock tower as well as a nice green space with a small stream of water running along it. An older man was sitting on a bench by the stream feeding the birds. He was trying to talk to us, I think, but we couldn’t understand whatever he was saying. Just smile and nod, just smile and nod :)