Split - The Living Palace

Split is a fascinating anomaly: a Roman imperial palace that became a living city. In this street photography series, I explored this friction between the solemnity of thousand-year-old stone and the triviality of everyday life. Here, history is not visited, it is inhabited. I was captivated by this layering of eras, where laundry dries between ancient columns.

The intimacy of marble.

The alleys of Diocletian's Palace are narrow and cool. Light enters in fragments, illuminating scenes of domestic life that seem never to have changed. I photographed the residents in their everyday gestures, blended into this monumental setting as if it were a simple working-class neighborhood.

The breath of the Adriatic.

As soon as you step out of the palace, the city opens onto the sea and the Riva. The contrast is total: you go from confined shadow to the brightness of the horizon. I captured this transition, this necessary breath that gives Split its unique rhythm, between historical interiority and maritime openness.

The market by the ramparts.

Every morning the market sets up right against the ramparts, a burst of color against the pale stone of the palace. Under red umbrellas, halved watermelons sit next to sacks of loose almonds, walnuts, and dried fruit. I watched a florist writing out price tags by hand under an orange tarp, a vegetable seller peeling potatoes without looking up, a vendor keeping watch over a table piled high with oranges and watermelon. Here history takes a step back and makes room for ordinary trade: the quiet calls of the sellers, the sweet smell of ripe fruit in the air. It's the one place in this series where color outshines the stone.

A place to live, not a museum.

This series is a testimony to continuity. In Split, I saw that beauty is not a museum piece, but a way of life that people make their own every day, with simplicity.