50° A RECENT VISIT TO THE DALMATIAN COAST, 
architectural record, and supplies a necessary link in the 
evolutionary history of architecture which would otherwise have 
been missing. Without it we should have had no means but that 
of pure conjecture to connect the architecture of ancient Greece 
and Rome with that of later times. It marks, in fact, as the late 
Professor Freeman has well said, “The greatest step ever taken, 
the beginning of all later forms of consistent arched architecture, 
Romanesque, Gothic, or any other.” 
The general plan of the palace (fig. 1) is after the restoration of 
Robert Adam, who was the first to draw the attention of the 
world to the wonders of Spalato. In the year 1757, Adam visited 
Spalato, and in the course of five weeks of incessant labour, carried 
on under considerable difficulty, completed a survey of the palace, 
which he subsequently gave to the world in 1764 in a large folio 
volume, the ‘Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at 
Spalato in Dalmatia.” During the progress of this work Adam 
was enabled for the first time to form an idea of the plan and dis- 
position of the building when in a perfect state, and although 
many other careful observers, notably Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 
Professor Freeman, and Mr. T. G. Jackson, have followed him 
with the fuller knowledge of the nineteenth century, yet this 
description of Adam’s stands to this day the best account of 
Spalato we have, and the general accuracy of his statements has 
been abundantly confirmed. 
The whole building was quadrangular, the dimensions of the 
alternate sides of the quadrangle being 698 feet and 592 feet. The 
enclosing walls, which exist almost intact to this day, are extremely 
massive in structure, and have a height of 50 feet at the lowest 
part, rising to 70 feet in height towards the sea, owing to the 
natural fall of the ground in that direction. There were sixteen 
towers in these walls, one at each angle, and four on three of its 
sides. ‘These towers were not much more lofty than the walls of 
which they formed part, and seem to have been intended for 
ornament rather than for defence. The total area covered by the 
building is about nine and a half acres. It, of course, con- 
tained, besides the apartments of the Emperor, accommodation 
