Split is a Roman palace with a ferry port attached. Both of them go somewhere.
Which island boat actually anchors long enough to swim. What the Cetina canyon costs before lunch. Whether Krka beats Plitvice when you have one free day. Reviews of every tour you can book in Split and along this coast.
The palace, the lagoon, the falls, the five islands, the canyon.
Five bookings a first week in Split is usually built around. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first afternoonSplit: Old Town and Diocletian Palace Walking TourTwo hours inside the palace walls with someone who can tell you which stones are Roman and which are Venetian.
02The waterfall daySplit: Krka Waterfalls Trip with Boat Cruise and SwimmingSkradinski Buk on the Krka, with the boat in from Skradin. The busiest day trip on this coast, and the one nobody regrets.
03The swimming dayBlue Lagoon & 3 Islands Cruise with Lunch from SplitAnchored in shallow turquoise off Drvenik with lunch on board. Slow, long, and the reason people book a second one.
04The big island runBlue cave, Mamma Mia and Hvar, 5 islands speedboat tourBiševo at opening time, then Stiniva, the Pakleni and Hvar town. Five islands and a very early alarm.
05The canyon dayOmiš: 3-Hour Cetina Canyon Zipline ExperienceRafts through the Cetina gorge behind Omiš, with the cliff jumps for anyone who wants them.
Lagoon, cave or open throttle. Pick the boat before you pick the island.
Almost everything worth doing here starts at a mooring on the Riva or in the marina beside it. Four kinds of day on the water, what it costs to get aboard each one, and how far out each one goes.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Blue Lagoon & 3 Islands Cruise with Lunch from Split
The Blue Lagoon dayShallow turquoise off Drvenik, a long anchor, lunch on board.
Blue Cave and five islandsBiševo at opening, then Stiniva, the Pakleni and Hvar town.
Speedboat daysA dozen people, no coach timetable, four islands before dinner.
Sunset sailingsOut past Marjan as the light goes, drinks on deck.
All 66 boat days out of Split →
Six places within an easy morning of Split harbour.
A lavender island with a fortress over the harbour, the white stone the palace was cut from, an olive island nobody photographs, a walled Venetian town by the runway, a pirate river mouth, and the Riviera pinned under a mountain wall.
The days out of Split that more travellers book than any other.
Every Split review we have written →The boats, the falls and the walks that carry the heaviest traffic on this coast, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Split: Krka Waterfalls Trip with Boat Cruise and Swimming
Travel from Split to Krka National Park by air-conditioned bus, cruise from Skradin to Skradinski Buk, and explore the falls with a guide. Afterward, enjoy two hours in Primošten for swimming, lunch, or old-town wandering. Guides such as Ante, Gianna, Leo, and Leon are known for keeping the day lively and on schedule.
From · $31
Read our review →
2
From Split: Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour
from $45
3
Blue cave, Mamma Mia and Hvar, 5 islands speedboat tour
from $111
4
From Split: Krka Waterfalls, Food & Wine Tasting Tour
from $44
5
Split/Trogir: Blue Cave, Mamma Mia, Hvar and 5 Island Tour
from $109
6
Blue Lagoon & 3 Islands Cruise with Lunch from Split
from $78
7
Split: Old Town and Diocletian Palace Walking Tour
from $17
8
Split: Blue Lagoon Boat Party with DJs, Shots & After Party
from $47
Two national parks, both reachable before the Split traffic builds.
Krka is an hour up the coast: a river that falls over travertine steps into a green basin, with a boat in from Skradin. Plitvice is the long one, three hours each way through the Dinaric hills for lakes stacked on top of each other. Neither is a lie-in.
The old town of Split is somebody’s retirement villa, still occupied.
Every walk inside the walls →
Diocletian built it to retire into around 300 AD, and people never moved out. Cafés sit in the colonnade, flats are cut into the guard rooms, and the cellars under the whole thing survive because the town used them as a rubbish tip for centuries. These three walks carry more travellers than anything else on land here.
The cellars, the Peristyle, the bell tower
The substructures give you the floor plan of the emperor’s apartments above, because they held them up. Then the cathedral tower, which is a mausoleum with a belfry bolted on and a staircase that is not for anyone shaky with heights.
Golden Gate to the Riva, slowly
Out through the north gate to the Grgur Ninski statue, back down the Roman street grid, along Marmontova and onto the waterfront. Enough time for the Venetian and Napoleonic layers, not just the Roman one.
Green market, fish market, konoba
The Pazar green market and the Peškarija fish hall sit either side of the palace walls, minutes apart. Then the small plates: pršut, sheep cheese from Pag, a glass of Pošip, and something that was in the sea that morning.
The Cetina does the things the Adriatic cannot.
Cold water, a limestone gorge and a road in from Omiš that takes forty minutes. Rafting on the wide water, canyoning where it narrows, quads on the tracks above the rim, and a zipline strung across the whole thing.
What a day out of Split actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best days here cost less than a table for two on the Riva.
Palace walks, the cellars, food and wine tastings, tuk-tuk runs up Marjan and the short hops to Trogir.
The full days: the Blue Lagoon boats, Krka with the river cruise, rafting on the Cetina, quads above Omiš.
Private skippers, small-group speedboats to Biševo and Vis, and the charter days that take the whole trip up a level.
Split is the door to the middle of the Adriatic. Use it.
Šolta is close enough for an afternoon, Brač has the beach everyone photographs, Hvar has the lavender and the late nights, and Vis was shut to foreigners until 1989 so it still feels unfinished. The ferries go from the Riva; the small boats leave from the marina next to it.
Every island day out of Split →
Trogir, Omiš and Makarska each earn a day of their own.
Trogir is a walled island town twenty minutes from the airport, small enough to walk in an hour and worth two. Omiš sits where the Cetina cuts through a limestone wall, which is why every rafting and canyoning trip starts there. Makarska is an hour south under Biokovo, with the skywalk cantilevered off the mountain above it.
- 1Blue Cave & 6 Islands Speedboat Tour From Split or Podstranafrom $130
- 2Blue cave, Mama Mia and Hvar, 5 island speedboat tour from Trogirfrom $111
- 3Krka Waterfalls tour with Trogir Walking tour and Krka panoramic boat cruisefrom $48
Three things that happen nowhere but central Dalmatia.
Old towns and clear water exist all over the Mediterranean. A cave that goes electric blue at ten in the morning, a Roman palace with washing hung across it, and a river that drops through a gorge behind a pirate town do not.
The Blue Cave
The cave on Biševo has one low entrance and a submerged second opening underneath it. For a few hours around mid-morning the sun comes through the underwater arch and the whole chamber turns a hard electric blue, lit from below. Boats go in a handful at a time on a numbered system, the visit lasts minutes, and swell shuts it without notice.
- 1Blue cave, Mamma Mia and Hvar, 5 islands speedboat tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,150 reviews
- 2Split/Trogir: Blue Cave, Mamma Mia, Hvar and 5 Island Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 6,320 reviews
- 3Blue Cave & 6 Islands Speedboat Tour From Split or Podstrana★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,195 reviews
Diocletian’s Palace
This is the only Roman imperial palace anyone still lives inside. Refugees from Salona moved into the emperor’s halls in the seventh century and never left, so the guard rooms are flats, the colonnade is a café terrace, and the mausoleum of the emperor who persecuted Christians became the cathedral of a Christian saint he executed.
- 1Split: Old Town and Diocletian Palace Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 4,727 reviews
- 2Walking Tour of Split and Diocletian’s Palace★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,588 reviews
- 3Split & Diocletian’s Palace Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,125 reviews
The Cetina canyon
The Cetina comes off the Dinaric plateau and saws through a limestone wall to reach the sea at Omiš, which is how the town made its living as a pirate harbour. The gorge above it runs cold and green all summer. Rafts take the wide stretch, canyoning crews take the narrow one, and there are cliff jumps if you want them.
- 1Zipline Croatia: Cetina Canyon Zipline Adventure from Omis★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,248 reviews
- 2Omiš: 3-Hour Cetina Canyon Zipline Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,050 reviews
- 3Split: Cetina River Rafting with Cliff Jumping Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 997 reviews
Four bookings on this coast that will not wait for you.
Most of Split can be arranged the night before over a beer on the Riva. These four run on entry slots, boat numbers and river levels that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Blue cave, Mamma Mia and Hvar, 5 islands speedboat tourBoats enter one at a time through a low opening and the numbers are controlled. In July the good slots are gone weeks ahead.
- 02From Split: Plitvice Lakes National Park Guided TourEntry is on a timed ticket with a daily cap, and it is three hours each way. Turning up without one is a very long drive for nothing.
- 03Split: Krka Waterfalls Trip with Boat Cruise and SwimmingSkradinski Buk runs on timed entry in high summer, and the boat up from Skradin keeps its own timetable.
- 04Split/Omiš: Cetina River Rafting with Cliff Jump & SwimmingDepartures are fixed and the river depends on what is released upstream. Outside July and August there may only be one run a day.
Some mornings every boat stays tied up in Split. Have a plan.
The bura comes down off the mountains cold and in gusts, the jugo pushes in warm and heavy from the south, and either one can cancel an island trip at seven in the morning, especially in spring and autumn. Both have the same answer: go inland, or go indoors. The palace, the market, a cellar, a river that does not care about the sea state.
By place — islands, river towns, the road inland
By kind of day — deck, canyon, colonnade or table
Palace, lagoon, falls, cave, canyon: how a first week in Split usually falls out.
Split old townThe newest reviews from Split and the coast.
More new Split reviews →
Split Cooking Class – Afternoon Edition Shared Activity
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Private Split Walking tour with a Photo session
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Makarska: Baggy Skywalk & Biokovo viewpoint Tour
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Makarska: 3 Island Speedboat Tour with Little Blue Cave & Lagoon
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Speedboat to 3 islands: Hvar, Brač, Zečevo with watersports
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