Salona

Salona was an ancient city on the Dalmatian coast of present-day Croatia, near modern Split, that served as the capital of the Roman province of Dalmatia. It grew from an Illyrian and later Greek settlement into a major Roman provincial capital with a large amphitheater and extensive fortifications, and lay close to the later retirement palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian. The city was destroyed in the early seventh century amid Avar and Slavic incursions, and its surviving population fled to found nearby Split. Its ruins remain one of the most extensive archaeological sites on the Adriatic coast.