Summer is Split at full volume: 30 °C, sea at 25 °C, every boat running and the old town solid with people from eleven to four. It works if you invert the day — swim and walk early, hide in the palace cellars at midday, and start the evening at seven like everyone who lives here.
By Marin Perić
The mistake is doing the stone at midday. Locals swim before nine, disappear indoors or under the Marjan pines from noon, and come back out at six. Do the same and August is a good month; fight it and you will spend the best hours of the day queueing on hot limestone.
Every boat trip runs, daily, including the Blue Cave and the five-island route.
The sea peaks at 26 °C in August — the warmest water of the year.
The Split Summer Festival stages opera in the Peristyle through July and August.
Bene and Kašjuni for pine shade; Bačvice for picigin and the beach clubs afterwards.
Ultra Europe in mid-July, if that is your thing — and worth planning around if it is not.
Accommodation roughly doubles against June, and the middle two weeks of August are the busiest of the year because Croatia is on holiday too. Book catamarans days ahead — they sell out. Restaurants worth eating in need a booking. And the afternoon maestral wind makes the sea choppy from about two, which is why every good boat trip leaves early.
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.