Gripe Fortress

Venice built it in the middle of the sixteen hundreds, when the Ottoman frontier sat close enough to Split that the old palace walls were no longer an answer to…Venice built it in the middle of the sixteen hundreds, when the Ottoman frontier sat close enough to Split that the old palace walls were no longer an answer to anything. It is a bastioned work of its period, low and angled rather than tall, designed against cannon rather than ladders.

The ground inside was built on later, which is how a maritime collection came to live in a fort: ship models, charts, engines and the naval history of the eastern Adriatic. For a lot of visitors the setting is the reason to go up, and the collection is the bonus.