Ancient Salona

Rise and fall of a city

Ancient Salona had a considerably higher importance in historical times than the small town of Solin today. Originally a fortified port city of the Illyrian Dalmatians, Salona was taken by the Greeks in the 4th century BC. The city had a strategic location on the Jadro River at the junction of the coastal road and a path leading inland over the Klis Gorge.

Julius Caesar elevated Salona to the rank of a Roman colony (Colonia Martia Iulia Salona) in the middle of the 1st century BC, making it the administrative center of the entire province of Illyria (later Dalmatia) at that time. The Roman emperor Diocletian, who probably came from Salona himself, gave the city the honorary title of the emperor's family name: "Valeria". From 475 to 480 the last legitimate Western Roman emperor Julius Nepos resided here.

Between the 4th and 6th centuries Salona was an important center of early Christianity, to which many archaeological sites testify. At the height of its development, the city is said to have had about 70,000 inhabitants - three times the population of today's city. At the end of the 5th century Salona became part of the Ostrogothic Empire under Theoderic. In 535, the Eastern Roman commander Mundus conquered the city for Emperor Justinian.

In the early 7th century Salona was conquered by the Avars and Slavs. No contemporary source records the fall of the metropolis of Dalmatia. As late as 600, Pope Gregory was in contact with the city to settle an ecclesiastical dispute. According to coin finds and the interpretation of later sources, Salona may have fallen between 611 and 626. In 640/41, prisoners from Dalmatia were ransomed, which rather speaks for a later date of the conquest. After that, Solin lost its importance to the neighboring city of Split. From about the middle of the 7th century, the population had moved away from there almost completely.