The object that will first attract your attention upon entering the harbour of Spalato is the tall campanile, always in repair, and around which the hideous scaffolding has been allowed to remain since 1882, and it will probably remain for some time to come; for the repairs to the tower are so slow in progressing that as soon as one job is finished another presents itself. The building of this campanile was begun by Maria of Hungary about 1300, but her death in 1323 caused an interruption to the work. It was not again taken up until 1360, when Elizabeth the Elder, sent by her son Lewis of Hungary to govern Dalmatia, ordered that the work be carried out under the supervision of the Spalatine architect, Nicolas Tverdoj. The tower was completed in 1416, but it was not so substantially built as it might have been—for we are told that the subtle art of “graft” had made itself felt in Dalmatia even at that date—and as early as 1472 an architect, Nicolo Fiorentino, commenced the repairs which have continued to this day and which, from all appearances, promise to continue until the campanile is a ruin. From the top of the scaffold, after a somewhat tiresome climb, one can obtain a comprehensive and beautiful panoramic view of Spalato, where lived and died the composer Von Suppe, and also of the harbour. Aside from the quaintly dressed Dalmatian fisher folk, who patch and re-patch the variegated sails of their tiny craft along the stone quay, the town is interesting from the fact that it contains the best example of Roman domestic architecture to be found anywhere in the world, not excepting the magnificent ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. [Illustration: SPALATO FROM THE CAMPANILE.] The subject of this rather broad, but nevertheless true, statement is the old palace built by Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century, and in which the Roman ex-Emperor took up his abode after his abdication and where he lived until his death in 313, A. D. Its building marked the date of a new departure in architecture; a departure which ended in the development of the Byzantine and the Romanesque art of modern Europe, they having been inaugurated by modifying the rules of the ancients. To this favoured spot on the coast near the then powerful Illyrian metropolis of Salona came Diocletian, and here he built his imperial villa, where he hoped to live peacefully for the remainder of his days. And what a wonderful villa it must have been!