Split's old town is the inhabited core of Diocletian's Palace — a dense medieval and Renaissance overlay on a 4th-century Roman grid. The network of narrow lanes between the palace walls still follows roughly the original Roman plan: the main east-west street (Decumanus) runs from the Iron Gate to the Silver Gate; the north-south Cardo runs from the Golden Gate to the Bronze Gate and the sea. Between them, hundreds of years of incremental building have created one of Europe's most intimate historic city centres.
The density is the key to it. Within a space you can walk end to end in ten minutes, there are Roman temples, medieval churches, Renaissance palaces, bars operating in original Roman vaulting, and families who have lived inside the walls for generations. The lanes are lit at night by the glow from cafe windows and the occasional Roman column built into the corner of a medieval house. Even in peak summer, the smaller alleys retain a local life that the Stradun in Dubrovnik — the other great Dalmatian old town — largely loses to the tourist economy.