Why Split needs a local guide
Split's old town is literally inside Diocletian's Palace. People live in apartments built into Roman walls. The basement halls that were used as a dump for centuries are now open for visits. The Riva waterfront is where locals drink coffee for three hours on a Saturday morning.
Split receives over 3 million visitors a year, most of them passing through on the way to the islands of Hvar, Brac, and Vis. They spend an afternoon in Diocletian's Palace, walk the Riva, and catch a ferry. They miss the fact that Split is a living city inside a Roman ruin, where apartments are built into 1,700-year-old walls and someone's kitchen window opens onto a colonnade that Emperor Diocletian once walked. To become a tour guide in Split means understanding that this is not a museum. The Pazar market runs every morning behind the palace walls, farmers from the hills selling cheese, figs, and olive oil on stone counters. The fish market at the western wall has been trading since the Middle Ages. On the Riva, locals order a macchiato at 9am and do not move until noon. If you want to become a tour guide in Split, you need to explain how a retirement palace for a Roman emperor became a neighborhood where kids play football in the peristyle. You take visitors to Bacvice beach where Splitcani play picigin, a water game invented here that involves slapping a small ball with your palm. Becoming a tour guide in Split means showing people a city where ancient history and daily life are the same thing, separated by exactly zero meters.