The Land of Dragons
- Location: Split, Croatia
- Aug 22, 2015
- 6 min read
"Don’t fashion me into a maiden that needs saving from a dragon. I am the dragon and I will eat you whole."
While that quote is not from Game of Thrones, the rest of our final adventuring day in Croatia took us into a Song of Ice and Fire more than we expected – and with 100° heat almost every day, “Winter Is Coming” became more of a wishful thought than a terrifying omen.
As many G.o.T. fans know, Croatia was a huge filming location for major sets on the show. The biggest set in all of Croatia, however, must be the southern coastal city of Dubrovnik – where most of the Red Keep and King’s Landing was filmed. It was our goal that Saturday morning to get an early start in Zadar and make the 4 hour trek down to that exciting destination. Unfortunately, 10 minutes into our drive, with outside temps already hitting the upper 80°F (at 8am), we discovered that our AC was -once again- broken. While my husband and I were willing to suck it up and endure the sweltering heat and humidity that this Saturday promised -sans AC- to give us the opportunity to visit such an iconic location, a couple in our group (who are not into G.o.T. world) were not so interested in that adventure. To keep everyone happy, we agreed to continue our drive south, but only to the city of Split, which is only about 1 1/2 hours from Zadar.
Split is a popular & historic city along the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia, known for being rather touristy, but also very unique and authentic in certain areas. Even if we had chosen to visit Dubrovnik this day, we had planned on visiting Split the following day, partly because we knew it housed some additional sets for Game of Thrones. Although, to be honest, we weren’t 100% sure where they were (bad destination prep on our part).
Upon arriving, we made our way down to the water’s edge to find a beautiful strip of shops, cafés, and (of course) bountiful gelaterias all along the port, where many boats were waiting to take visitors out on Adriatic excursions. While we didn’t get to partake in one of these excursions on this trip (next time, my friends…next time), we did happen upon a G.o.T. set within our first 20 minutes in Split.
By sheer luck, we wandered down a small staircase off the coastal strip and found ourselves in an architectural and G.o.T. jackpot: the entrance to Diocletian’s Palace. In its time, this palace of the Roman Empire was one of the most important and impressive fortresses on the Dalmatian coast. To this day, it is still one of the most imposing Roman ruins one can find in our modern and globalized world. The main chamber when you enter the palace may look vaguely familiar to most G.o.T. fans and I shall tell you why.
At the end of Season 4, the beautiful and powerful Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Stormborn of the house Targaryen, realizes that, while her dragons are bound to her in a way many have never seen before, they are still wild and dangerous creatures whom she can’t fully control. After one of her dragons accidentally kills a small child while flaying a farmer’s herd for its meal, Daenerys makes the choice to lock them up in underground chambers in her newly acquired city, Meereen. This main corridor of the Diocletian’s Palace is the exact location where we see Daenerys emotionally imprison her “children” (save for her favored wild one, Drogon).
Not a huge or overwhelming piece of the G.o.T. world…but definitely enough to stir our excitement. And whether or not you are a Game of Thrones fan, you can not deny the awesome architecture and age of this (primarily) underground maze of history.
After touring the underground passageways of the palace, we emerged above ground in a stone courtyard with a tall bell tower to our right, which of course we had to climb (after a bite to eat in the courtyard…all that excitement can wear a girl out, you know).
While it is a bit of a climb, the views at the top of the bell tower will seriously knock your socks off! (Even though none of us were wearing socks as it was almost 100°F, I can guarantee that if we had been, the poor people of Split below would have had socks-a-plenty raining down on them.) From the tower’s open-air windows we could see all along the port and coast, as well as the city of Split behind us; Mediterranean coastal charm abound!
From above we could see a beautiful courtyard filled with brick and stone mason work, creating fun color designs of whites and grays against the burnt red-orange of brick, and with an amazing pop of purple from this huge bush of incredible, blossoming flowers.
We wound our way back through the main courtyard and outer corridor of Diocletian’s Palace, and back up to the strip of shops along the coast, where treated ourselves to some delicious gelato as we walked by the water, back to our hot rental car. On the way back to Zadar, Brad looked out the driver’s side window and happened to see a structure that looked like an old fortress perched on the side of the mountain. I barely had time to visually locate the structure he was referring to when he exclaimed, “Let’s go check it out!” As we had no other set plans for the remainder of our day, no one objected as he quickly exited the freeway and followed his own sense of direction to get us to the mystery fortress.
We arrived below the structure within 5 minutes of driving through a small town set upon a mountain outside the main city of Split. To get to the entrance, we had to park the car in a minuscule lot and walk further up the hill toward the summit. Upon paying a small entrance fee and observing that we were one of only two small groups exploring the old, yet impressively preserved for a mountain structure, remains, we learned that we were at Klis Fortress.
As we strolled liesurely along the walls of this old fortress, set above the city of Split, Brad and I glanced at each other and began making quiet remarks of, “This place seems familiar.” And “I know. Why does it look so familiar?” As I stood between the entrance to a small chamber and the outer walls of Klis, Brad snapped the photo above as we heard Tyler’s voice ring out of the chamber windows, “It’s Meereen!” “What?” “Yeah! And they have an exhibit in here with the Meereen photos and everything, so you can see how it was used!” And just like that, we could see it. Quietly, we let it wash over us for a moment as we took it all in. Meereen…the latest home and conquest of Daenerys Targaryen, where she abolishes slavery and houses her dragons… My fangirl inside just couldn’t contain her excitement anymore… THIS WAS SO COOL!!!
While, of course, Klis Fortress doesn’t exactly resemble Meereen’s fortress (there was a ton of CGI used to create the exotic ambiance and façade of Meereen), you can definitely see the infrastructure of the G.o.T. citadel in this quiet castle set overlooking the coast and city of Split. We ran from one end of the fortress to the other, marveling at all of the pieces of the fictional structure that we could see in the walls of Klis.
And while it is all rather marvelous in a nerdy fandom kind of way…whatever you do, DO NOT use the bathrooms there. While the little stone walls and bright blue doors look rather charming, don’t let it fool you! They were quite possibly the most vile bathroom stalls I’ve ever had the displeasure of using. And that, unfortunately, is saying something.
All in all, while our day started with the disappointment of not being able to visit Dubrovnik, it quickly turned into an excited flurry of Game of Thrones fangirling and giddiness whilst running through two historically impressive old world fortresses in the city of Split. As we drove back to Zadar that torrid afternoon, I felt satisfied that at least we’d had the incredible luck and opportunity to see so many amazing things, not just that day, but every day of our week in Croatia! Even with sub-par research and poor planning of details for our trip, we’d had the chance to spend a few days exploring Zadar and the local coast line, two astonishingly beautiful national parks, and gorgeous Split with its surprising little jewels that bring all the fangirls to the yard.
We are so glad that we’d made Croatia a priority for our traveling while living abroad in Europe; there are still so many places in this wondrous country that we have yet to experience and we are impatient to return and explore it further.
In the meantime we shall immerse ourselves in re-runs of Game of Thrones and gloat to all of our friends in the nerdom about how we had a chance to experience real-world Meereen, current home of the Mother of Dragons and the true Queen of Westeros. ♥M.
Photo Credit: Home Box Office (HBO)
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