Page - 471 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

471The Neugebäude sections by cardo and decumanus, two streets crossing at right angles and con- necting the gates in the centres of each side. 9.8.3 The Fortified Palace of Diocletian at Split It is interesting that Serlio himself says that he based his plan on the descrip- tion he had been given by Cardinal Marco Grimani, Patriarch of Aquilea, of the remnants of a Roman castellum he had seen in Dacia, the former Roman province in present Serbia and Romania. This castellum, a permanent garrison town basically planned along the same lines as the temporary castra, has been identified with Pontes, one of two fortified settlements built to protect the bridgeheads of the spectacular bridge across the Danube built by Trajan near present-day Kladovo on the Serbian-Romanian border. It is not totally impos- sible that Maximilian may have been aware of this rather remote and obscure monument.64 There was, however, one monument in one of the north-eastern provinces of the Roman Empire that was still standing and was reasonably ac- cessible: the fortified palace built in the first years of the fourth century by the Emperor Diocletian at Split, close to his birthplace Salona (Solin) in Dalmatia. 64 bsb-hs, Cod. Icon. 190, f. 1r; quoted in English translation and discussed in Hart 1998, p. 76. In view of the argument on dilettante architects it is interesting to note that Grimani had himself ‘measured it and put [it] in a design to the best of his abilities’ (ibid.). The bridge is illustrated on the shaft off Trajan’s column in Rome commemorating the Dacian campaign, of which Strada possessed complete and detailed documentation. Figures 9.42–9.43 A measured ground plan of the existing remains of Diocletian’s palace at Split and a view showing how its remains were incorporated in the fabric of the later medieval and Renaissance town, engravings from Robert Adam, Ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, London 1764.