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“The views from the Palace are no less beautiful”: the Context of Diocletian’s Palace in Adam’s Spalatro

Ana Šverko’s paper expands the study of Adam’s reading of place, focusing on the context of the monuments and the phenomenon of direct experience of place. The objective of her discussion is an examination of the phenomenon of immediate experience, which was at the heart of the Grand Tour. Adam’s experiential approach to architectural tourism produced a new familiarity with both the monument and its surroundings. By focusing on descriptions and depictions of the physical context of the Palace – not just of the isolated ancient monument – Adam’s book represents the Palace as one stratum of a complex urban historical landscape. Through a careful study of Adam’s methodological approach, her aim is to draw attention to the importance of the environment of the monument as an important transmitter of the spirit of place. In order to adduce the significance of context in architecture and urbanism – within the neoclassical period in particular, and within both disciplines more generally – this paper begins with an exploration of the importance of immediate personal perception in Adam’s notion of the truthful experience of a space. Behind Adam’s journey was his desire to study antique architectural models directly ; he wanted to know and experience these buildings fully, and in order to be able to employ them as models in his work. Šverko's reading of Adam is rooted in the architectural philosophy of the period, in which the interpretation of the language of Antiquity occupied a key position. Yet Adam was not a rigid disciple of ancient and Renaissance models (among whom Vitruvius and Palladio were the dominant exponents). For this reason he was able to document Diocletian’s Palace (which did not fit perfectly into the Vitruvian scheme) so well, and later to develop a specific architectural idiom which drew on Antiquity, which became known as the Adam Style. The structure of Adam’s book is revealing in this connection: although it is called the Ruins of the Palace Diocletian…, the ruins themselves occupy only a part. The complexity of the Spalatro’ depiction of Diocletian’s Palace indicates Adam’s intention to develop a theoretical reconstruction of the original appearance of the ancient monument, but also to record its condition and environment at the time of his visit. In the closing sections of this discussion Šverko concentrate on the significance that Adam ascribed to the real-time context of the Palace as he found it, for – as the Spalatro suggest – it is only through experience of space in a concrete context that we can know it as a whole.

Robert Adam, Diocletian's Palace, Split, neoclassicism

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