Pula and Split: The Early Modern Tale(s) of Two Ancient Cities

The chapter compares the uses of the Roman past of Pula and Split in the early modern period, two towns on the same maritime route between Venice and the Near East, elaborating on the “universality” of Pula’s urban identity as opposed to Split’s “uniqueness.” Moreover, the Roman buildings of Pula inspired visual artists and architects from Naples to Scotland, via numerous drawings and printed images that testify to the international reputation of these antiquities beginning in the mid‐fifteenth century. The impressive ruins of Diocletian’s palace in Split, on the other hand, had a lasting impact on the local architecture, but this can rarely be identified outside Dalmatia before the eighteenth century. Finally, the analysis of instances of refashioning of visual and verbal information on antiquities from the edge of Catholic Europe, which include different Italian, French, and British examples, expands our knowledge of the networks and media of circulation of such information.