Diocletian was as interested in private architecture as he was in public architecture. He was a man you, you can tell a lot about him just from what I've told you. He was very organized and he planned ahead for his own abdication eventually his own retirement and he wanted to live ultimately back in his, where his roots were. On the Croatian, on the Dalmatian coast and he built for himself a palace in a place called Split in what is now Croatia. And I show you again the map of this part of the world. If you look at Pula that way, I can't reach it from where I am but if you look at Pula where that is and down the Dalmatian coast you'll see Split right below that. Dubrovnik is at the base. This is actually a view I took of Dubrovnik just to give you a sense of this part of the world. It's magnificently beautiful there and one can imagine how, why Diocletian was drawn to return to his homeland for his palace. So we are looking here at the plan of the palace of Diocletian, which is extremely well preserved. This is from Ward-Perkins. And you should be immediately struck by this palace, because it which dates, by the way, to 300 to 305 AD. We see here something that I'm sure you've all noticed already, and that is that he has built this palace in the form of a Roman castrum. It's a Roman military camp. It is a little city. It, it's a city in its own right. In the form of a Roman military camp. Why did he do that? That's interesting. Well, I think it had something to do with the fact that the structure was located on the sea right on, you know, right at a promontory on the sea and could easily have been attacked. And times were still, he was still, he had brought stability back, yes. But he was very a, aware of, of what he had, had preceded him in the third century. And desirous of protecting himself and his possessions in his palace on, on, on the Dalmatian coast. And so he builds it in the form of a castrum. You can see all the elements of a typical Roman military camp. Just as we saw in city art, city buildings, urban planning from the republic on, it's rectangular in shape. It has walls. It has watchtowers. You can see they are alternately rectangular and octagonal watchtowers. It has entrances and exits. It has a cardo and a decumanus. That cross at the intersection of the palace. You can see there are the main gateway is on the northern side. The southern side faces the sea. As you walk from the northern entrance way along the, the cardo and decumanus so to speak of this palace. You will see that they are colonnaded just as they usually are in the eastern part of the empire but not in the western part of the empire. As you walk along from the entrance way you enter into a public court, over here, very elaborate, that's still preserved with a, an arcuated lintel, I'm going to show you that in a moment. Then into this domed area here with alcoves. But note that on either side of this this, this open space with the arcuated lintel which is called the peristyle of the villa. You can see on one side a small temple, which is the temple to Jupiter, the patron god of Diocletian. And on the other side a mausoleum, an octagonal tomb. Now, that should strike you as very interesting and very unusual. We have not seen a tomb as part of palace architecture before. This is new to late antiquity. This probably has to do in part, with again, Diocletian planning this as his place of retirement. He knew he was going to retire there. He knew he was going to die there and he wanted to make sure that he supplied for himself a tomb. He was not going to be buried in one of these major mausolea, in Rome, he wanted to be buried at home. And so he plans for this by building a an octagonal, not a round, like Augustus and Hadrian, but an octagonal tomb with a porch here in the villa and note that it is right across from the temple of Jupiter. No no coincidence there. Go through the domed room domed space into the private wing of the house. You see a room here with bas-, a basilican shape. We're not exactly sure what it was used for, but probably some kind of reception hall. And then here a series of interestingly shaped rooms that was where the emperor's private quarters were located. This is a restored view of what this fortress palace would have looked like when it was built in the fourth century. We see it here all of the things I've already described, the outer walls, the watch towers the entrance way on the north, the colonnaded streets. You can see the octagonal tomb rising up over there across from the Temple of Jupiter. And then down here, the private area, the private wing, and you can see how the southern side faces the sea and there seems to have been an arcuated lintel on that side. We've seen that that's grown in influence and importance since it was first used in the time of Hadrian. This is the Porta Aurea, or the northern gate of the palace. You see it in a restored view from Ward-Perkins rectangular entrance way, lintel window-like with grates above niches on either side, with arcuated pediments, but most interestingly is the upper tier where you see a series of columns on brackets that support arcades. This whole idea of arcades on columns you know, began as we know, later in antiquity. And continues to be important into the late third and early fourth centuries. We saw it at the Forum for the Severan Forum at Leptis Magna. Where you can see again columns this arcaded colonnade here. We saw it in residential architecture. Late residential architecture. Think of the house of Fortuna Annonaria where we have those that, that, those columns with arches above them that separate the fountain court from the triclinium. So I just wanted to make the point that we see it not only at Diocletian's palace, but is very common in late Roman residential and civic architecture as well. This is a view of the peristyle as it looks today. We have we are walking we have come from the north gate. We're walking along we're hitting the peristyle. We're going to be going from the peristyle into that domed area here. Imagine views through the columns of the peristyle, and some of those columns are still preserved, as we can see them, the original columns, views clearly of the temple of Jupiter and of the mausoleum of Diocletian on the other side. Arcuated lintel here inside a complete pediment. So that scheme also used as the major decoration of the peristyle in the palace of Diocletian. Here's a view of what the small temple of Jupiter looks like. We're looking, it originally had a statue of Jupiter. Now it has a statue of Saint John the Baptist. But you can see the shape very much like the curia. A box-like shape, very simple in this case not with a flat coffered ceiling but with a barrel-vaulted coffered ceiling. But again very simple, very geometric and we can that that barrel vault is exposed on the exterior. We can see the shape of the barrel vault from the outside, as well as from the inside. Here a view of the [COUGH] octagonal tomb. The plan of that tomb, an octagon with colonnade around it. Columns on the inside, radiating rectangular and curved niches. But a porch, the whole idea of the porch not unlike the Pantheon, except that it's octagonal instead of round. Porch on the front. Deep porch. Freestanding columns. Facade orientation. Single staircase. So this is, this, this very similar to things that we've seen earlier. And two quick views. One engraving of what the the mausoleum, the octagonal mausoleum would have looked like. With its, you can see it's faced with stone with its entrance way, facade, and staircase. And here you can see it is very well preserved still today in and split where you see the surrounding columns you can see the octagonal shape and the stonework all still very well preserved. As is the interior. Interior, very ornate with columns projecting from the walls, supporting these projecting entablatures. Deeply drilled, dematerialized in the baroque manner with lots of sculptural decoration, representations of victory and death and victory over, and hunting and and a victory in, in war and consequently this close association as we've seen among all of those. And then scenes of both with a portrait it of Diocletian and a portrait of his wife Prisca. Both of those being carried in these wreathes up to the heavens by flying cupids. Here's another view, perhaps a better one, that just gives you some of the, a sense of the, of the over decoration, over ornamentation, the baroque effects of the interior of the tomb. So very, a very different feel to the temple of Jupiter than to the tomb of Diocletian himself. Here he has gone all out. And commissioned the most ornate possible decoration with all the baroque effects that we've described in two tiers for the interior of his mausoleum.
