Pale limestone walls, arched gates and a columned square inside a working old town.
What Diocletian's Palace looks like
Built at the end of the third century AD, the walls are white limestone with marble facing. Restaurants and some homes still occupy them. Café tables and awnings sit at ground level beside the stone.
The is the central square, a court of columns and arches with a granite sphinx on a plinth at its edge. It leads on to the Vestibule and the imperial apartments beyond. The Cathedral of St. Domnius stands on the east side. Its bell tower rises over the paving.
Many of the streets are narrow lanes between stone walls. Some have balconies and at least one opens onto a view of the bell tower.
The stands at the end of the road to Salona, on the north side, with a church above it. The is the only one of the four main gates still in continuous use. The stands on the east side.
Below the southern end of the palace lie cellars that are among the best preserved ancient complexes of their kind. Part of them can be visited free from the Brass Gate on the Riva. The rest is ticketed. The cathedral and its bell tower need a ticket too.
A World Monuments Fund project is cleaning and restoring the stone and plasterwork. Scaffolding and hoarding cover parts of the walls while the work continues.
Shot in Diocletian's Palace
Two productions have shot in the palace. One is a fantasy drama and the other a reality competition.
Game of Thrones, 2011 to 2019
Diocletian's Palace
The HBO series Game of Thrones used the palace as a location in its fourth season. The credit is for the palace as a whole, so no room or street is given.
The Amazing Race, season 31
The CBS reality series The Amazing Race hosted a task at the palace in season 31. Teams had to follow a quick-moving formation of 18 Roman soldiers.
What Diocletian's Palace can double for
Trogir old town in Trogir, Croatia
Trogir's old town is a walled settlement on a small island. Its palaces and churches run from the Romanesque to the Baroque. The cathedral of St. Lawrence has a west portal by Radovan, which is among the most important Romanesque-Gothic works in Croatia. Trogir's fronts are medieval and later rather than Roman, so the palace's colonnades would need framing out in any wide view. Try searching walled island old town now.
Stradun in Dubrovnik, Croatia
The Stradun runs through Dubrovnik's walled old town, a limestone-paved pedestrian street about 300 metres long. Both ends have 15th-century fountains, so a straight run of stone paving between them is the frame to look for. The fountains mark each end of the frame, so the palace's columns and sphinx would need to be kept out of shot. Try searching limestone paved pedestrian street now.
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