Things to Know Before Visiting Split

The Money Is Euros Now, and Cards Work Almost Everywhere

Croatia swapped the kuna for the euro at the start of 2023, so ignore any guide, blog post or forum thread still quoting prices in kuna, it's out of date and so is everything else on that page. Cards are accepted almost everywhere, contactless included, and you can get through a week in Split without touching a banknote if you want to.

Keep some cash anyway, because a handful of things still run on it: the green market, the nightly tourist tax your host collects on arrival, parking meters, the odd tiny konoba, and tipping. One thing genuinely worth knowing at the cash machine, if it offers to charge you in your own currency instead of euros, always decline and choose euros. That conversion is done at a rate that quietly costs you a few percent every time.

• Euros since 2023, kuna prices online are outdated
• Cards everywhere, cash for the market, the tourist tax and tips
• Always choose to be charged in euros at an ATM, never your home currency
• Bank ATMs give better rates than the ones in tourist doorways

Croatia Is in the EU and in Schengen

Croatia joined the Schengen area at the same time as it took the euro, which means no passport check flying in from another Schengen country and no queue at the Slovenian border if you're driving down. Travellers from outside the EU need a passport as normal but nothing exotic beyond that, and the EU health card works for European visitors.

The only real border you'll meet on a day trip is Bosnia and Herzegovina, if you're going to Mostar or the Kravice falls, which needs a passport and can mean a genuine wait in July. Dubrovnik does not, the Pelješac bridge means the drive south stays inside Croatia the whole way. Split itself is right in the middle of it all, twenty-five kilometres from the airport and two hours from the Bosnian border.

The Heat Decides Your Day, Not Your Plan

In July and August the middle of the day is not sightseeing time. Split is built out of white limestone that stores heat and gives it back at you from every wall and pavement, so the Old Town at two in the afternoon is several degrees hotter than the number on your phone. This is the single most common mistake we see, visitors who walk the palace at midday, get quietly wrecked by it, and lose the evening.

Do what everybody who lives here does: be out early, be in the sea or in the shade from roughly noon until five, and come back out when the stone starts to cool. The city is at its best before nine in the morning and after seven in the evening anyway, and those are the hours when the light is worth photographing. Our guide to the best time to visit Split makes the fuller case for June and September if you have the choice.

• Sightsee before eleven and after six in high summer
• Midday belongs to the sea, a long lunch or a dark bar
• The stone radiates heat, it's hotter in the lanes than the forecast
• Carry water, there are public fountains around the centre

The City Runs on a Different Clock

Mornings start early, and coffee between eight and ten is a genuine social institution rather than a caffeine delivery. Lunch, if it's the local marenda, is late morning to early afternoon. The middle of the afternoon is dead. Dinner does not begin until eight and a konoba at nine in the evening is properly busy, so a restaurant that looks empty at half six is not a bad restaurant, it's just early.

A few other rhythms are worth knowing. Many shops now close on Sundays outside the tourist strips, so do a supermarket run on Saturday. Public holidays close things too, and the fifteenth of August, Velika Gospa, falls right in peak season and shuts a lot of the city while the beaches are at their fullest. And there is a local word, fjaka, for the state of doing absolutely nothing in the heat with a clear conscience. Treat it as advice.

• Nobody eats dinner before eight, book for half eight or nine
• Coffee is at ten in the morning and takes an hour
• Many shops close on Sundays, shop on Saturday
• 15 August is a national holiday in the middle of high season

The Beaches Are Pebble, Not Sand

This catches out more people than anything else on the list. With the exception of Bačvice, which is shallow and genuinely sandy, Split's beaches are pebble, shingle or slabs of rock, and the sea floor is the same. It is beautiful and clean and the water is extraordinarily clear, precisely because there's no sand in it to stir up, but it is unkind to bare feet.

So bring water shoes, or buy a pair here for a few euros in the first week, and you'll swim in twice as many places. Watch for sea urchins on the rocky entries, they sit in the shallows and the spines are a miserable way to spend an afternoon. The sea is warmest from late July through September, and September swimming is the local secret. The rest of it is in our best beaches in Split guide.

• Water shoes are the best five euros you'll spend here
• Bačvice is the only proper sandy beach in the city
• Sea urchins live on the rocky entries, look before you step
• The sea is warmest in September, long after the crowds thin

What Actually Goes in the Bag

Bring a refillable bottle, because the tap water here is excellent, it comes from the Jadro spring that fed Diocletian's aqueduct seventeen hundred years ago, and buying bottled water in Split is money set on fire. Bring proper shoes as well as sandals, since the polished limestone in the Old Town is slippery and anything above the city, Marjan, Klis, the Fortica on Hvar, is uneven rock.

Two smaller things. The cathedral and the churches ask you to cover shoulders and knees, so a light scarf or a shirt in the day bag saves a wasted walk. And evenings on the water are cooler than you expect even in August, so take a layer if you're on a sunset boat or the late ferry back from an island. Plugs are the standard European two-pin at 230 volts.

• Refillable bottle, the tap water is genuinely excellent
• Shoes with grip, the old lanes are polished stone
• Shoulders and knees covered for the cathedral
• A layer for evening boats, it gets cool on the water

The Winds Have Names, and They Change Your Plans

Dalmatians talk about the wind the way other people talk about the weather, and it's worth understanding because it's the thing most likely to rearrange your week. Bura is the cold, hard, gusting north-easterly that drops off the mountains, sharp and dry, and it leaves behind the clearest blue sky you'll ever see. Jugo is the opposite, a humid south-easterly that pushes up a swell, brings the grey and, according to everyone here, makes the whole city irritable. Maestral is the gentle afternoon sea breeze in summer and the reason a hot day is bearable by four o'clock.

What that means practically is that boat trips are weather-dependent in a way land trips aren't. The Blue Cave is the first thing cancelled when the sea gets up, and fast catamarans to the islands can be pulled in bad conditions, especially outside high summer. Book the big boat day early in your stay so you have somewhere to move it to, which is the same advice we give in best day trips from Split.

• Bura: cold, sharp, and it clears the sky beautifully
• Jugo: humid and grey, and the sea gets rough
• Boat trips cancel on wind, land trips don't
• Book the Blue Cave early in the trip, not on your last day

Coffee Is Not a Takeaway

In Split, coffee is a place you sit for an hour or two, not a cup you carry. Ordering one and staying at the table all morning is completely normal, nobody will hurry you, and no waiter will drop the bill on you as a hint. On a Saturday morning the whole city is doing it at once along the Riva and in the squares, and it is one of the genuinely lovely things about being here.

Practically: ask for a macchiato and you'll get an espresso with a little milk, ask for bijela kava and you'll get something closer to a latte. The bill comes when you ask for it, never before, so catch the waiter's eye when you're ready. And a lot of terraces are still smoky, so if that matters to you, sit inside or upwind.

How Restaurants Work, and What to Tip

Tipping is not obligatory and nobody is offended if you don't, but rounding up is standard and something around ten percent after a proper dinner is normal and appreciated. Cash is easier for this than adding it to a card. Water is ordered and charged like anything else, and bread sometimes appears on the bill as a small cover charge, which is normal here rather than a scam.

The one thing that genuinely surprises people is fish, which is sold whole and priced by the kilo rather than per portion, so ask what the fish weighs and roughly what it will cost before you nod. Nobody minds the question. Our Split food guide covers that properly, along with the local rule that fixes almost every meal here: walk two or three streets back from the water.

• Round up, or about ten percent for a full dinner
• The bill only arrives when you ask for it
• Whole fish is priced per kilo, always ask the weight
• Two streets back from the Riva, always

You'll Be Fine in English, but Learn Five Words

English is spoken widely and confidently, by almost everybody working in tourism and by most people under fifty, and plenty of older Split residents have German or Italian too. You will not have a language problem here. But the effort of a few words is noticed more than in most places, and it changes the temperature of a conversation immediately.

Dobar dan for hello during the day, hvala for thank you, molim for please and also for you're welcome, oprostite for excuse me, and živjeli when the glasses go up. That's the whole kit. One small thing worth knowing: the language is Croatian, and Split has its own broad coastal dialect that even other Croatians find entertaining, so if you can't follow a word of what two people are shouting at each other across a square, neither can half of Zagreb.

Split Is Very Safe, With Two Small Caveats

Croatia is one of the safer countries in Europe and Split is a safe city by any measure. Walking home through the Old Town at two in the morning is unremarkable, women travelling alone generally report feeling comfortable, and violent crime is rare enough that it makes the national news. The emergency number is 112 and a pharmacy is a ljekarna, with at least one in the city on duty around the clock.

The two caveats are minor and both are about crowds and stone. In the packed lanes of the palace in August, pickpocketing exists in the way it does in every European city with a crush of tourists, so a bag that closes is enough. And the limestone underfoot is polished glass-smooth by two thousand years of feet, which is a genuine hazard in the rain and after a few drinks. More people hurt themselves slipping in Split than in any other way.

• 112 for emergencies, ljekarna for a pharmacy
• Normal crowd sense in the palace lanes in peak season
• Wet limestone is treacherous, slow down when it rains
• Tap water, swimming and walking at night are all fine

Arrival Day, Luggage and the Awkward Hours

Most flights land in the morning and most apartments check in from two or three in the afternoon, which leaves a gap that catches people out with bags in the heat. Message your host the day before with your arrival time, because check-in here is a person meeting you rather than a desk, and ask whether you can drop the luggage early. Most will say yes. If not, there's paid left luggage at the ferry and bus terminals, five minutes from the palace.

Remember also that taxis stop at the edge of the pedestrian zone, so an Old Town address means wheeling your case the last few hundred metres over cobbles. Something to bear in mind when you're choosing where to stay, which we go through properly in where to stay in Split, and when you're working out how to get in from the airport, covered in how to get around Split.

• Message your host with an arrival time the day before
• Left luggage exists at the ferry and bus terminals
• Taxis stop at the edge of the Old Town, you walk the rest
• Don't plan anything strenuous for the first afternoon

Book These Three Things Before You Arrive

Almost nothing in Split needs booking in advance, which is one of the pleasures of the place, but three things genuinely do. Accommodation in July and August goes months ahead and the good central apartments go first. Catamaran seats to Hvar sell out days in advance in peak weeks. And peka, the great Dalmatian dish cooked for hours under an iron bell, has to be ordered at least a day ahead and usually for a minimum of two people.

Everything else you can decide over breakfast. The car ferries to Brač and Šolta take walk-on foot passengers all day, museums rarely have queues worth planning around, and konobas outside the peak fortnight will usually find you a table if you turn up before eight.

• Accommodation for July and August, months ahead
• Catamaran seats to Hvar, days ahead in peak season
• Peka, a day ahead and usually for two people minimum
• Everything else can wait until you're here

Things You Can Safely Skip

Don't rent a car for the days you're in the city. The historic core is closed to traffic, summer parking is expensive and scarce, and plenty of visitors end up paying more to store the car than they saved on the apartment. Pick it up on the morning you leave for Krka or the coast road instead.

Don't book three day trips into a four-day holiday either, which is the most common regret we hear, and don't spend an evening on the Riva terraces expecting the food to match the view. Save that money for one proper konoba dinner two streets inland. And you don't need a guided tour to walk the palace, it's a living neighbourhood with streets and shops rather than a site with a ticket gate, though our Diocletian's Palace guide will tell you what you're looking at.

The One Thing Most Visitors Get Wrong

People arrive thinking Split is the palace, spend two days in the same six lanes, and leave believing they've seen it. The palace is roughly two hundred metres across. The city around it runs up a forested hill, along a coastline of coves and out to a set of viewpoints that look straight down over the islands, and almost none of that is within a comfortable walk in the heat, which is exactly the argument we make in why Split is best explored by tuk tuk.

That's the gap our retro tuk tuk tours exist to close: an hour or two, open sides, up through the neighbourhoods to the Marjan lookouts and along the coast road, and back where you started with the city finally making sense as a shape. The Classic Tour is what most people do on their first day, since it doubles as your bearings for the rest of the week, and if there's somewhere specific you've read about, we'll build the route around it.