Diocletian's Palace Sells Milk and Eggs Now — Split, Croatia's Grocery Store Inside a Living Roman Palace

Me, mid grocery run, with a 1,700-year-old Roman column for company — welcome to the SPAR inside Diocletian's Palace

There's a version of this story I've told at dinner parties in the US more times than I can count. It usually starts the same way: someone asks where I'm from, I say Split, Croatia, and they nod politely like they've maybe heard of it. Then I mention that there's a Diocletian's Palace grocery store — a full working supermarket tucked inside a 1,700-year-old Roman palace in the middle of my hometown — and the table goes quiet. Someone always says, "wait, what?"

So let's clear it up. Yes, there is a fully functioning SPAR supermarket — the kind with fluorescent lights, self-checkout, and a produce aisle — sitting inside the walls of Diocletian's Palace. Roman columns rise up between the shelves. Glass panels in the floor let you look down at foundations that predate the fall of the Roman Empire. And locals have been picking up eggs and toilet paper there for over a decade like it's the most normal thing in the world. Because to them, it kind of is.

For everyone else, it's one of the strangest retail spaces on Earth. Let me take you inside — as someone who's actually pushed a shopping cart through it, not just photographed it for five minutes on a layover.

Wait, There's a Grocery Store Inside Diocletian's Palace?

Here's the part that trips people up first: Diocletian's Palace isn't a museum you walk through and leave. It's not a ruin, and it's not roped off behind glass. It's a living, breathing neighborhood — arguably one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban cores in Europe. People actually live inside its walls. They run cafés inside its walls. And since 2014, they've been able to grocery shop inside its walls too.

Bananas and watermelons, framed by 1,700-year-old Corinthian columns.

The palace was built in the early 4th century as a retirement compound for the Roman emperor Diocletian, who did something almost no other Roman emperor ever did: he voluntarily gave up power. He walked away from the empire to grow vegetables and, according to legend, told anyone who tried to talk him back into ruling that they should come see his cabbages first. There's something almost fitting about a produce section eventually showing up in the same footprint, even if I doubt he'd have pictured a barcode scanner.

The entire historic center of Split, palace included, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, recognized for being one of the best-preserved examples of Roman palatial architecture anywhere in the world. That's the detail that makes the grocery store so jarring to outsiders — this isn't some crumbling ruin on the edge of town. It's protected, celebrated, photographed constantly, and it has a supermarket humming away inside it.

So How Did a Supermarket End Up Here?

This is where the story gets more interesting than "quirky travel oddity," and honestly, it's the part I find myself explaining most when people ask "but how is that even allowed?"

The supermarket occupies the ground floor of the Mala Papalićeva Palača — the Small Papalić Palace — a Gothic structure believed to date back to the 13th century and rebuilt roughly two hundred years later by the noted Venetian-Dalmatian architect Juraj Dalmatinac (also known as Giorgio da Sebenico), one of the most significant architects of the Dalmatian Renaissance. This wasn't some anonymous building. It was the home of a noble family, tucked into the bones of the emperor's own palace complex.

Here's the technicality that made all of this legally possible: when Split's historic core received UNESCO protection in 1979, the designation covered the district as a whole, but it didn't automatically nationalize or freeze every individual property inside it. The ground floor of the Mala Papalićeva Palača remained privately owned. That private ownership is what gave the Austrian grocery chain Billa the legal right to purchase the 2,500-square-foot space in 2014 and open a store there. Billa was later acquired by SPAR, and the supermarket has operated under that name ever since.

Technically, the building is protected for sitting inside a historic monument, even though the supermarket itself was never separately granted UNESCO status. That's the loophole that lets people call it "the UNESCO-protected supermarket" with a little wink — it's protected by association, not by design.

What It's Actually Like as "Just the Grocery Store" to a Local

I want to be honest about something: when this store opened in 2014 — first as an Austrian chain called Billa, later absorbed into SPAR in 2017 — it wasn't universally welcomed. A lot of Split locals were unhappy about a commercial chain moving into a building with this much history, and there was real pushback at the time — people felt something sacred about the old town was being cheapened. The city administration, for its part, had essentially no legal grounds to stop it, since the space was privately owned and zoning didn't distinguish between types of retail.

Walk through a centuries-old stone archway... straight into the wine aisle.

But here's what nobody really predicted: it became normal shockingly fast. For those of us with roots here, it stopped being a controversy and became a convenience. Need milk before a family dinner? You duck into the palace. Forgot bread? Same thing. There's something almost surreal about running an errand in a space where, a few feet away from the cereal aisle, there are glass floor panels revealing ancient stone foundations beneath your sneakers. Roman-era columns and archways frame the checkout lanes like nobody thought twice about it, because by now, nobody really does.

That's the part I try to get across to people outside Croatia: this isn't a novelty stunt store built for tourists. It's a fully operational neighborhood supermarket that happens to be wedged into one of the most significant surviving Roman structures on the planet. You'll see locals doing their weekly shop right alongside visitors snapping photos of the pillars.

What You'll Actually See If You Visit

If you're planning a trip to Split and want to see this for yourself, here's what to look for:

The Gothic shell. From the outside, you'd almost walk past it — the building reads as historic architecture first, retail second. Look for the arched windows and the weathered stone facade of the Mala Papalićeva Palača.

You'd never guess this centuries-old doorway leads to a grocery store — until you spot the SPAR sign

The Roman columns inside. Once you're through the doors, the transition is immediate. Aisles of packaged goods sit beneath genuine Roman-era architectural elements — the kind of juxtaposition that photographs incredibly well, if a little absurdly.

The glass floor sections. Near some of the support pillars, glass panels let you see straight down to the older stone foundations below. It's a small detail, but it's the one that makes people stop mid-shop and pull out their phones.

The general disbelief on other tourists' faces. This one's free. Stand near the entrance for a minute and watch people's expressions shift from "just going to grab a water bottle" to "wait, are those actual Roman columns?"

If you want to extend the theme, the palace also holds Nadalina Čokolada, a small gourmet chocolate shop a short walk away, run by chocolatiers who've been ranked among the best in the world and once held the record for the largest chocolate bar ever made. Between the supermarket and the chocolate shop, you can build an entire "unexpected shopping inside a Roman palace" afternoon.

Why This Story Matters Beyond the Novelty

It would be easy to file this away as just another "weird things exist in Europe" listicle entry, and I get why people first encounter it that way online. But as someone from Split, I think the story says something bigger about how the city treats its own history: not as something frozen behind velvet rope, but as something you live inside. The palace isn't a backdrop here. It's the neighborhood. People are born in apartments tucked into its walls, they get married in its courtyards, and yes, some of them buy their groceries in its foundations.

Split isn't unique in blending old and new — there's a McDonald's inside a historic Roman-era building in Rome, and a Zara occupying a historic structure in Athens. But I'd argue the Split SPAR does it with a little more audacity, because it isn't tucked into a corner of the complex. It's dead center in one of the most iconic UNESCO sites in the world, and it has been quietly, uneventfully open for over a decade.

Other Grocery Stores Hiding in Unexpected Places Around the World

Once you start noticing this phenomenon, it's hard to stop. Turns out, tucking a modern supermarket into a building that was never meant to hold one is a bigger trend than I expected. A few of my favorites:

Eliseevsky, Moscow, Russia. This one might be the closest rival to Split's palace supermarket in sheer visual drama. Eliseevsky sits right on Tverskaya Street in central Moscow, inside what was originally built as an opulent private residence. Chandeliers, gilded ceilings, and ornate stained glass frame the aisles, and the store still stocks caviar as a permanent fixture — a sign inside reportedly announces it's "always in stock."

Gastronome No. 1, Moscow, Russia. Housed inside Moscow's historic GUM department store, this shop is a modern recreation of a Soviet-era grocery that originally traded from 1953 to 1990. Marble columns, vintage-style staff uniforms, and old Soviet product lines sit next to international gourmet goods — a strange little time capsule dressed up as a working store.

A supermarket inside the Red Hook Stores warehouse, Brooklyn, New York. This 19th-century Romanesque Revival warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront once held dock cargo behind its iron shutters and brick facade. After a careful renovation, its ground floor became home to a full-service grocery market, with produce and specialty stalls set beneath the original heavy timber columns and exposed steel beams.

Fortnum & Mason, London, England. Technically a department store rather than a supermarket, but its food halls are the stuff of grocery-tourism legend. The building dates back to 1707, and its multi-floor layout, complete with a grand staircase, makes a grocery run feel more like checking into a hotel.

Peck, Milan, Italy. Opened in 1883 in the heart of Milan, Peck blends a historic delicatessen, wine shop, and bistro all in one, with a wine selection running into the thousands of labels. It's proof that a grocery store with real history behind it can be a destination in its own right, not just a place to restock the fridge.

Compared to all of these, Split's palace supermarket still stands out for one reason: none of the others are sitting inside a still-inhabited, UNESCO-protected Roman emperor's palace. Most historic grocery stores earn their charm from their own age — a converted warehouse, a grand old department store. Split's is different because the building predates the concept of a grocery store by well over a thousand years, and the palace was never built to hold a shop like this in the first place.

Where to Stay Near Diocletian's Palace

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If reading this has you wanting to see the palace supermarket (and everything else the old town has to offer) for yourself, staying inside the palace walls makes the whole experience even more immersive. A few standout options, all within a couple of minutes' walk of the SPAR:

Hotel Vestibul Palace. Set right beside the palace's central Vestibule, this boutique hotel blends original Roman stonework with modern rooms, and its location puts you within a minute's walk of nearly everything in the old town.

Heritage Hotel Antique Split — a highly-rated boutique stay right by the bell tower, with rooms that look out at St. Domnius/Sv. Duje itself.

Grisogono Palace, Split. Housed in a Gothic-era noble family residence built into the palace itself, this spot sits right at the intersection of two of the palace's main historic roads, with a courtyard bar that hosts live music in the evenings.

Villa Nepos Hotel — a restored historic building in the old town core, spacious suites, right in the heart of the palace.

Any of these put you close enough to grab your morning coffee, wander past Roman columns, and still make it to the SPAR for a bottle of water without leaving the palace walls.

The heart of Diocletian's Palace — this bell tower has stood watch over the old town for centuries

So, Should a Grocery Store Really Be Inside a UNESCO Site?

I've thought about this a lot, honestly, more than you'd expect for a question about where people buy milk. There's a part of me that understands the appeal of treating the palace as living history rather than something sealed behind glass and velvet rope. I love that people are born in apartments tucked into these walls, that they get married in the courtyards, that the streets are still just... streets, not museum corridors. It's the same reason I love the tiny Church of St. Martin tucked into the palace's Golden Gate — a place that's stayed quiet, small, and largely untouched for centuries, exactly as it was meant to be.

But the supermarket feels different to me, and I've never quite been able to talk myself out of that feeling. There's something about fluorescent lighting, plastic shopping baskets, and price tags sitting where a Roman emperor once walked that just doesn't sit right with me. This isn't some ordinary old building being put to practical use — it's one of the best-preserved Roman palaces on the entire planet, a site so rare that UNESCO singled it out among thousands of applicants back in 1979. I don't think a site with that kind of significance should have ended up as a place to grab groceries, no matter how legal the loophole was, and no matter how normal it's become for locals who now don't think twice about it.

That's really what unsettles me most: not that the store exists, but how quickly and quietly everyone, myself included, got used to it. Something this rare probably deserved a little more resistance than it got.

But I'd genuinely love to know where you land on this — do you think I'm being too precious about it, or does something this historic deserve more protection than "the ground floor happened to be private"? Drop a comment and let me know. I read every one.