Event
Six weeks of lights, mulled wine, fritule and klapa concerts on the Riva and around the Prokurative. Free, genuinely local rather than tourist-facing, and the best reason to visit Split in winter.
Smaller and less commercial than Zagreb's Advent, and better for it. Wooden stalls along the Riva and in the Prokurative square, mulled wine and fritule, concerts most evenings, and an ice rink for the children. Everything outdoors, which in a 12 °C December is entirely comfortable — colder than a northern European market, but dry, and you are drinking wine next to the sea rather than in a square hemmed in by department stores.
The stalls line the Riva, Split's seafront promenade.
Walk the Riva stalls after dark, when the lights are on and the crowds are out. It is at its best between six and nine.
Eat fritule from any stall with a queue of locals — they are the small fried dough balls, somewhere between a donut and a pancake, and a paper cone of them costs a couple of euros.
Skate on the rink at Prokurative if you do not mind an audience. It is small, cheap and mostly full of children.
Catch a klapa concert in one of the churches or on the open stage. Klapa is Dalmatian a cappella singing, and it is the thing here that you cannot get at a German Christmas market.
Climb the Marjan stairs on a clear morning when the stalls are closed and the city is still asleep. The view is the same one as in summer, with nobody else in it.
Everything on the Riva is free to wander and the concerts are free to watch; you pay for food and drink at the stalls, and for the ice rink. Most stalls take cards but a few are cash only. The old town restaurants stay open throughout, and a proper konoba dinner after the stalls is the move — you will not be the only table still there at ten.
For the season as a whole, see Split in winter.
Split in December covers the weather and the sea that month.
Get out there
Guided trips that include this stop, with live availability.
History
Ninety minutes through the palace with a guide who lives inside it: the Golden Gate, the cellars, the Peristyle, the cathedral and the streets in between. Small group, no flag, and a proper explanation of why a Roman emperor retired to a cabbage patch in Dalmatia.
Within a short walk.
Nightlife
Split's staging area, not its destination. The seafront cafés turn into bars after eight, and you are paying for the seat and the view of the palace wall going gold — a fair trade for one round while the group assembles, a poor one for a whole evening. Move inside the walls by half ten.
Culture
Split's palm-lined seafront promenade, and the city's actual living room. Locals walk it at seven every evening, coffee lasts an hour, and nobody is in a hurry. Free, always open, and the correct place to watch the light go orange on the palace wall.
Boat trips
Croatian law lets anyone drive a boat under 5 kW without a licence, which is enough to potter round a bay at walking pace and reach coves the buses do not. Around €57 a day out of season and €88 in August, and nobody will ask you anything except for a deposit.
History
The vaulted basement halls that held up the emperor's apartments, preserved because they were filled with rubbish for a thousand years. The best-surviving Roman substructure anywhere, ten degrees cooler than the street, and the one part of the palace that looks like a ruin.
Boat trips
Two hours out of the city harbour towards Čiovo and back as the light goes, with a drink in your hand and Split's waterfront lit from the water. The single easiest good decision on a first evening in the city.
History
Two hours around the palace cellars, the Peristyle and the Klis-facing viewpoints where Meereen was filmed. Honest verdict: worth it if you love the show, skippable if you merely watched it — a standard palace tour covers the same stones with more history.
History
Diocletian's Palace is free: its lanes, the Peristyle, the domed Vestibule and the central passage through the cellars are open at all hours with no gate. You pay only for interiors — the side halls of the cellars (€10 for adults as of October 2026) and the cathedral, bell tower, crypt, treasury and Temple of Jupiter, ticketed separately. Built around AD 305, it is still full of homes, bars and shops.
History
The oldest cathedral building in the world still in use, and it started life as the mausoleum of the emperor who persecuted the man it is now named after. The bell tower beside it gives you the best view in Split for the price of 183 steps.
Food & drink
Twelve seats at a counter, a blackboard that changes daily, and cooking that is better than places charging three times as much. No reservations, no table service, and a queue outside from seven. Worth the wait.
Food & drink
A small konoba on a Varoš side street doing exactly four things well: grilled fish by the kilo, black risotto, octopus salad and house wine from a jug. No view, no English menu board outside, and a queue by eight in July.
Food & drink
Three and a half hours through the green market, the fish market and four family-run places inside the palace, eating soparnik, pršut, Pag cheese, fresh anchovies and rožata. Enough food to replace lunch, with the context that makes Dalmatian cooking make sense.
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.
Culture
Inside the palace for atmosphere and noise, Varoš for stone lanes and quiet, Bačvice for the beach and the nightlife, Meje for calm and views, Žnjan for space and value. Split is small enough that none of them is a bad choice — they are just different holidays.
Culture
Yes, for two to five days, and most of all in June or September. Split is a Roman palace that people still live in, with beaches in town and the islands an hour away by boat. It is not worth it for a party-free week in mid-August, or for anyone who wants sand and silence.
Culture
Base yourself in Split if you want islands, day trips, beaches and a city that is still a city. Choose Dubrovnik for two or three nights of the most complete walled town on the Adriatic. For a week, Split; for a long weekend, either; with ten days, both — four to five hours apart.