papalic palace

In the Middle Ages, smaller houses were built along the Roman walls. A typical one is the house with the exterior staircase preserved in the north section. In the central wall of Papalić Palace the experts found the façade of a three-storey house with Romanesque portals on the ground and first floor and two Romanesque windows on the second and third floor.
The Papalić family, originally from the Poljice Republic, came to Split in the early 14th century and is one of the oldest and most eminent Split families. In the late 15th and early 16th century they reconstructed several Romanesque houses and connected them into a two-storey palace that became a meeting place of Split’s humanists. The houses in the south section were pulled down to make room for a courtyard accessed via a luxuriously ornamented Gothic portal.

The Museum and the Papalić Palace Complex
	The Split City Museum occupies a complex of medieval buildings in the north-east section of the Palace of Diocletian. The east, bigger part of the complex, is Papalić Palace with most of the exhibition rooms and the storage space. The offices are in the south-west section. There are two courtyards within the complex. The interior walls of the Museum complex are part of the Palace of Diocletian, preserved in places to the second floor level of the present-day buildings. Dating from the Roman times is a preserved pavement and arcade of the Cardo, the canals, impressions of the pavement stones in the east side of the complex and remains of a white mosaic.
In the Middle Ages, smaller houses were built along the Roman walls. A typical one is the house with the exterior staircase preserved in the north section. In the central wall of Papalić Palace the experts found the façade of a three-storey house with Romanesque portals on the ground and first floor and two Romanesque windows on the second and third floor. The Papalić family, originally from the Poljice Republic, came to Split in the early 14th century and is one of the oldest and most eminent Split families. In the late 15th and early 16th century they reconstructed several Romanesque houses and connected them into a two-storey palace that became a meeting place of Split’s humanists. The houses in the south section were pulled down to make room for a courtyard accessed via a luxuriously ornamented Gothic portal.
	The monumental portal is rounded off with an ornamental motif of merlons and a sumptuous acroterion on top. In the lunette is the Papalić coat of arms, framed by open leaves and stylised forms of a bird wing and an eight-point star. At the east end of the courtyard the Papalić family built a staircase leading to the first floor and in the west end a Gothic loggia was added with two arches resting on a central column with a capital and two semi-capitals ornamented with the characteristic leaf motif. The ground floor of Papalić Palace was simple and unadorned, as it was used as storage space for wine, oil and other products. The great L-shaped hall on the first floor (piano nobile) was accessed through an ornamented door at the top of the staircase. On the first floor two large rooms were joined into a single space by a 5.5 m-wide opening, making a representative hall, opened outward with Gothic monophoras, a biphora and a quadriphora. Over the hall is a well-preserved Gothic coffered ceiling, reconstructed during the renovation.