The House in the Statute of Split (1312) – Building, Maintenance and Demolition

Abstract

t can be said that the town statute of Split and the stipulations concerning the everyday life in this medieval town are not characterized by the aim to create an ideal city and, in this, they are far from the long-range urban planning contained in the statute of Dubrovnik. The fact that less than five per cent of the stipulations in the statute of Split relate to urban planning ought to be understood as indicatingthat the town, set in Diocletian’s Palace and determined by its structures, had already been defined to a large extent and that it functioned well and fulfilled the needs of its inhabitants. Thirty chapters of the statute deal with different aspects of the development of medieval Split and its everyday maintenance. This article focuses on the relationship between the local government and private property, that is, with the cases of private spaces being transformed into public spaces and the ‘ritualistic erasures’, that is, the demolition of houses whose owners committed treason and broke the law. This phenomenon of demolition as setting example was not limited to medieval Split but was recorded in other Dalmatian communes (in Omiš and Dubrovnik as late as the eighteenth century) and this discussion of it is based on the examination of a wider set of primary sources.