The south side of Marjan drops straight into clear water over rock rather than sand, which is exactly what you want and exactly what the city beaches are not. Bring a mask, walk in off the stones at Kašjuni or Bene, and it costs nothing.
By Ana Kovač
Kašjuni and Bene are the two easy ones — both have somewhere to leave a towel, both have a bar, and both put you over rock and weed within a few metres of the shore. Better, if you will walk for it: the small unnamed inlets between them, reached off the coastal path, where there is nobody and the bottom is visible at eight or ten metres. The rule is simple — sand means nothing to look at, rock means fish.
Kašjuni has white pebbles, deep clear water and pine shade.
Bene is the shaded one, with concrete platforms and pebble coves.
Wrasse in numbers, saddled bream, damselfish over the weed, the occasional octopus in a hole under a ledge, and sea urchins in quantities that make water shoes a good idea rather than an optional one. Nothing here is dangerous. The urchins are the only genuine hazard and they are a hazard to your feet, not to you.
To go deeper, scuba diving from Split starts with a try dive that needs no certificate.
Morning, before the wind puts chop on the surface and before the light goes flat overhead. The water is warm enough without a wetsuit from about June to the middle of October and clearest in September and early October, once the summer bloom has gone and before the first autumn storms stir the shallows.
Get out there
Guided trips that include this stop, with live availability.
Boat trips
Five hours to Šolta and back on a ten-person boat: three swim stops in coves you cannot reach by road, an hour in Maslinica for dinner or a drink, and the run home across the channel as the sun goes down behind the island.
Within a short walk.
Beaches
The best beach within reach of the city: white pebbles, clear deep water and pine shade on the south side of Marjan. A beach club at one end, empty rock at the other, and a sunset that faces exactly the right way.
Adventure
Board hire from Kašjuni and Bene for about €15 an hour, or a guided paddle along the Marjan cliffs. Flat water most mornings and a shoreline with no boat traffic close in — one of the easier places to learn.
Adventure
Three hours paddling the cliffs and hidden coves along Marjan's south shore, with two swim stops and a cave you can only reach by water. The best way to see Split from the side it was built to face, and easy enough for a complete beginner.
Adventure
The pine-covered hill on Split's western edge, a fifteen-minute walk from the Riva and the reason the city feels liveable in August. Free, open always, with viewpoints, hermit chapels, swimming coves at the bottom and a proper trail network on top.
Adventure
Bolted limestone routes on Marjan's south face, fifteen minutes from the old town, with the sea directly below. Guided beginner sessions run all year; the rock faces south so winter is often better than summer.
Culture
The villa Ivan Meštrović built for himself on Marjan's south slope, now the best museum in Split. Sculpture inside, a garden of bronzes with a sea view outside, and the Kaštelet chapel with his wooden reliefs five minutes down the road.
Adventure
Two hours on a board lit from underneath, pushing off Stobreč as the sun goes and paddling into the river mouth in the dark. The LEDs light the bottom through three metres of water, which is the whole point: you can see what is down there.
Family
The most Split thing you can do for ten euros. Poljud is a listed 1979 shell of a stadium, the Torcida have been going since 1950, and a mid-table league game on a Saturday night tells you more about this city than any walking tour will.
Adventure
An hour and a half up the marked path from Strožanac to the chapel of St George, topping out around 441 metres with Split, Kozjak, Mosor and the islands all in view. It is free, it starts at a supermarket, and locals walk it before work.
Adventure
Around eleven kilometres of the Cetina through its canyon below Omiš, on grade II–III water in summer. Three to four hours on the river, most of it drifting between short rapids, with swimming stops and a cliff to jump off if you want one.
Adventure
Wrecks, walls and caves within an hour of the city, on water that is warm from June to October and clear most of the year. A try dive needs no experience and no certificate; a certified single dive is the cheapest way to get wet if you already have a card.
Adventure
Walking, swimming and abseiling down the Cetina where the canyon narrows above Omiš. The extreme version drops you 53 metres beside the Velika Gubavica waterfall and 25 metres again near the canyon exit; the ordinary one keeps its feet closer to the water.
Nature
May, June and September are the best months in Split: warm sea, long days and half the crowds of high summer. July and August are hot, busy and expensive but have every ferry and every festival. Winter is quiet, cheap and genuinely pleasant if you like an empty old town.