Izvorni znanstveni članak
Diocletian 's palace. Kastron Aspalathos and his Palatium Sacrum
Radoslav Bužančić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4661-852X
; Konzervatorski odjel Ministarstva kulture u Splitu
Sažetak
The Aspect of Urban Design
Diocletian’s reforming spirit on the one hand and his cupiditas aedificandi on the other modified the centuries-old classical architecture of Rome. His time canboast of the enormous architectural productivity and of the influence that it had on the royal architecture of later periods. His joint rulers imitated him by building their own residences, as did generations of both pagan and Christian kings and princes until the Middle Ages. The urban transformations that he generated by the renovation of whole areas of cities are mentioned by his biographers, mainly Christians, holding against him, as against Nero, the consequences of his immoderate passion for opulent self-promotion. They also complained of his frequent changes of mind, because of which buildings only just completed were knocked down, although his urban design practice was not irrational. It was based on the development of the infrastructure of roads, aqueducts, public buildings and imperial residences, which were, in a sense, government buildings. Imperial residences were put up in the cities in the east where he reigned, as in his native Illyria, to which he retired after his abdication. The method used to build the residences consisted of demolishing a certain neighbourhood in the city, putting up fortifications at the place, girt with walls and towers, in which were further developed stoae, an augusteon and a palace. The palace would be separated from the rest of the building with a pomerium or free space that had a security function, among other reasons because of the fires that were often the cause of urban structures being destroyed. The spatial organisation of the residence was subject to ceremony and ritual, was imaged as the closing point of the adventus, the permanent triumph that the tetrarchy brought into the imperial cult. The triumphal procession to the residence would go through a series of triumphal gates, from the entry gates, via the tetrapylon in the centre, passing through the main street with its porticoes, going through the sanctuary to the entry into the palace. This kind of arrangement can be seen in Palmyra and Split, was described in Antioch, and was probably also there in Nicomedia, which was erected on a demolished city quarter, and it is also retained by later imperial residences like the Great Palace of Constantinopolis.
The Split imperial residence, although meant for a tetrarch who had retired from rule, was created on the same pattern. It was put up on a demolished quarter of Aspalathos, Roman settlement with Hellenistic roots that developed on the basis of a colony from Issa (at the same time as Epetium, Salona and Tragurium). Porphyrogenitus called the new quarter the kastron of Aspalathos, just as the new quarter in Palmyra is referred to as castrum in a wall inscription. Diocletian’s time called fortified residences camps, although the name does not mean the classical military camp, rather, in only brings out the similarity in the urban design, the right angles of the street pattern, and the fortified walls. For this reason Porphyrogenitus writes that the Split kastron is in fact a Palation mikron.
Architecture
The Split kastron is divided into two parts. The southern part had two basic features, the Fanum and the Palation, while the northern part was probably a large imperial stoa of the kind there was in Antioch and Constantinopolis with economic and administrative substances. The shrine, or Fanum, occupied the space in front of the palace, and was surrounded by a high wall curtain articulated by alternating niches of rectangular and semicircular plan. It was intersected in the middle by the main street by which one approached the palace; because of the arcading on the eastern and western style, it was called the Peristyle. Although it is thought that there was a temenos of the eastern imperial mausoleum and a temenos of the western sanctuary with its three temples, and that these were separate features, the space of the fanum is in fact an architecturally united whole. An additional problem in the perception of the space is the stratification of the Antique phase of the building, which was noticed by J. Marasović in the substruction of the Triclinium. Diocletian’s building at the time of its origin probably did not have thermae in the pomerium to the north of the palace, nor could the Peristyle have had at his time a substruction staircase in front of the main entrance to the palace, concerning which there had been a protracted, century-long, discussion. The sacred space in front of the palace in Split can be compared with the access to the Great Palace in Constantinopolis through the Augusteon with a street with arcading and porticoes, which was called Mese. The similarities in the Diocletian and Constantine organisation of the space in front of the palace would tend to confirm Dyggve’s assumption that the foundations of a monumental building found in the north of the Peristyle might have been part of the Tetrapylon. The Split augusteion had together with imperial museum four temples, of which at least two must have been dedicated to the patrons of the tetrarchy, Jupiter and Hercules, divine progenitors of the two Augusti. The cult of Jupiter in Diocletian’s palace is uncontested, while the many depictions of Hercules and his attributes on the brackets and cornice of the Small Temple would suggest that he also had a cult. The ceremonial entry into Diocletian’s palation goes through the Vestibule, the central building with the double portals on the north and south facades. This rotunda, as the Vestibule was called in the past, in scale and organisation is like the double northern, eastern and western gates with which Diocletian’s kastron was fortified. It can be, what is more, considered the southern gate, through which one entered the palace. Without getting into a discussion of the name of the southern door, it is possible by analogy with other imperial palaces to compare this building with similar entries that were called calkh and chalchi in Constantinople and Ravenna. Although both examples are taken from the palaces of Christian emperors, the similarity with Split is clear, and argues in favour of the proposition that the architectural and urban designs of the imperial palace were taken over in periods after Diocletian’s rule, from Early Christianity to the Middle Ages.
The disposition of the buildings of Diocletian’s residence, after a century of excavations, became clear at least at ground plan level. The distribution of the areas of the substruction and the first floor on the whole overlap, with the exception of a small part of the western wing of the palace. And although in this field archaeology has made a considerable contribution to the understanding of the building, it is still not possible to determine with any degree of certainty the functions of individual parts. What is clear from the ground plan is that the imperial residence had two foci, it was divided into an eastern and a western part. In the centre of the wings there were markedly monumental ceremonial buildings. The name of that in the east was preserved in the medieval documents, because a whole city neighbourhood was named after it. The building was named in a 14th century document sinagoga sdorium vocatum cum capellis. This is an architecturally specifically formed building of central form with three chapels, the ground plan of which recalls the trichorae of Antique villas and royal residences that apart from the utilitarian had a ceremonial function as well. The names of the parts of the imperial palaces are on the whole known from the Patristic writings in which the heavenly palace was described. All of them derived from the individual functions of the palace, the proaulium, salutatorium, consistorium, zetas hiemales, zetas aestivales, epicaustorium, thermas, gyimnasia, qoquinam, colymbos and hippodromum and excluding the tricorium, which described the form of a building. The trichora had been a sign of regal dignity since the time of the Principate and became a component part of the imperial residences in the period of Late Antiquity. The Split triclinium was not a direct quotation of the trichora, it was a central octagonal hall surrounded on three sides with rooms, and on the southern side with a large portico that spread from the very centre of the hall. It took over the architectural organisation structure that Hadrian’s teatro maritimo had, a lone island in the palace surrounded by a portico that was inaccessible. Its function was ceremonial, and it can be considered that this was also true of the triclinium triumphale of Diocletian’s Palace in Split, one of the two imperial halls.
Ključne riječi
Diocletian’s palace; town-planning and architecture of Tetrarchy
Hrčak ID:
68228
URI
Datum izdavanja:
29.5.2011.
Posjeta: 8.083 *