Split's best days out cost nothing. Walking Diocletian's Palace is free, so are Marjan hill, every beach, the green market, the Riva at seven in the evening and the klapa singing under the Vestibule dome. You can have a full day here for the price of lunch.
By Marin Perić
Market at eight for figs and bread. Palace and Peristyle before ten. Bačvice or Bene for a long swim. Marjan at six for the view. The Riva at eight for the walk everyone else is also doing. That is a genuinely good day and it costs whatever you spent at the market.
Things to Do in Split at Night
Things to Do in Split with Kids
Things to Do in Split When It Rains
14 picks, in order
Ordered by an editor who lives here, not by who paid the most.
Free to walk into, at any hour, with no gate to pass.
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.
Local favourite2 h
A forest park with no ticket and no closing time.
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.
Local favourite2 h 30 min
Sand, showers and picigin, all free.
Split's city beach, and the only proper sand within walking distance of the palace. Shallow for fifty metres, which makes it excellent for small children and the reason picigin — Split's own barefoot ball game — was invented here.
Local favourite
The evening walk costs nothing. Only the cafe chairs are charged for.
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.
Local favourite45 min
Free to walk through, and breakfast from it costs about two euros.
The open-air produce market against the palace's eastern wall, running every morning since forever. Figs, tomatoes, olive oil, cheese from Pag, and old women who will tell you your peaches are not ripe yet. Free to walk through, best before nine.
Local favourite45 min
Split's own game. Ask to join; someone usually says yes.
Split's own barefoot ball game, invented at Bačvice in 1908 and played in ankle-deep water with no points and no winner. Free, faintly ridiculous, and the single most Split thing you can do. Locals will let you join if you ask.
Local favouriteFree45 min
Sit on the steps rather than the cushions and the klapa singing is free too.
The colonnaded courtyard at the centre of Diocletian's Palace, where the emperor appeared to his subjects and where Split now drinks wine on the steps. Free, roofless, and the best-preserved Roman square you can sit down in.
30 min
Shade, ladders into deep water, and no charge for any of it.
On the north shore of Marjan, under dense pine, with concrete platforms and pebble coves, tennis courts, a running trail and a café. This is where Split actually swims — quieter than Bačvice, shadier than Kašjuni, and free.
Local favourite
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.
Local favouriteFree1 h 30 min
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.
Local favouriteFree1 h 30 min
The hour before the Riva. A pine-shaded headland fifteen minutes west of the harbour, on the site of an old cemetery, where you sit on the wall with a bottle from the shop and watch the sun drop behind Čiovo. Free, no bar, no music — then walk back down for dinner.
Local favourite1 h
A small sandy bay just past Bačvice, in front of the tennis club where Goran Ivanišević learned to play. Shallow, calm and mostly families — the quieter alternative when Bačvice is a wall of people.
Local favourite
A thirteenth-century chapel on the Marjan staircase, halfway between Varoš and the ridge. Small, usually locked, and the terrace in front of it is the quietest good view in Split — most people walk straight past on the way to Vidilica.
30 min
An eight-metre Meštrović bronze just outside the Golden Gate, of the bishop who fought to keep the liturgy in Croatian. Everyone rubs his big toe for luck, which is why it is the only polished part of him. Free, and takes five minutes.
15 min
Get out there
Guided trips that include this stop, with live availability.
Boat trips
A full day on a fast twelve-seat boat: the Blue Cave on Biševo, the Monk Seal cave, Stiniva's famous cove, lunch on Vis and a swim off Budikovac's turquoise lagoon, finishing with a stop at Hvar town. Ten and a half hours, small group, no coach transfer.
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.
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.