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Although the foundation of Split is normally connected with the construction of Diocletian's Palace, the city was begun as the Greek settlement of Aspálathos well beforehand. The Greek colony survived from trade with the neighboring Delmatae, who dwelled within the city of Salona.
Eventually, Rome became the primary power in the area, conquering the Illyrians in the Illyrian Wars. The Romans created the province of Dalmatia and made Salona its capital. The nearby town's name was changed to "Spalatum" from "Aspálathos".
After the First World War ended, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved, the province of Dalmatia, together with Split, was made part of The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which later became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As the two other major cities on the eastern Adriatic coast, Rijeka and Zadar, had been annexed by Italy, Split became Yugoslavia's main port.
After being invaded by Nazi Germany in April 1941, Split found itself occupied and formally annexed by Italy. The Croat majority strongly opposed Italian rule, and nearly one-third of the population became members of the partisans of Josip Broz Tito. In the Italian football championship, the city's football clubs refused to compete; soon thereafter, football clubs HNK Hajduk and RNK Split joined the Partisans.
In September 1943, Split was liberated by Tito's brigades, just to find itself almost immediately occupied by the Nazi-controlled NDH, the Independent State of Croatia. Parts of the Old Town and the port area were damaged by Germany and DNH. Unfortunately, in addition to being bombed by the Germans and their puppets, the Allies also bombed the city, from which hundreds died. The city was finally liberated by the partisans on October 26, 1944. Split served as the provisional capital of Croatia until the war was over.
Following the end of the war, Split found itself part of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which was a republic of the Yugoslavia's Socialist Federal Republic. During this time, Split had its greatest period of growth. Many new companies and factories were created, with Split's population increasing three-fold. The city served as an international business center and attracted masses of farm workers to the newly constructed factories as the Yugoslav Federal government's plan for mass industrialization and investment began to bear fruit. Split's shipbuilding business was doing especially well, putting Yugoslavia among the industry's top nations.
From 1945 and 1990, the city underwent a complete transformation and expansion, until it eventually came to take up the entire peninsula. During this period, it reached a very high GDP and its citizens enjoyed a standard of living that was far beyond even today's level.
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