There are some hidden points around Split not even many locals know about, and there are those which puzzle anyone who sees them. For example, whenever I'm guiding a tour around the historical city centre, there is a plaque almost everyone will stop and ask "What does it mean?" It's not very visible, placed on a facade of a strange looking, oriental style building in the passage connecting a square locally known as the Fruit Square and Riva. Next to a relief showing widely recognizable face inscription says "Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis stayed in this house in September 1898".

Usual guessing I witnessed was that for some reason Mr Freud practiced psychoanalysis in Split, which wouldn't be so strange for anyone knowing all the riddles of local mentality. Problem is that nobody really knows why he stayed in the house once owned by wealthy local salesman Stevo Perović, and designed by Italian architect Emil Vecchietti, who also signed a project of the Croatian National Theatre in Split.

One thing is certain; Sigmund Freud indeed visited Split, because he mentioned that in his book The Interpretation of Dreams. Did he have some wealthy patient? Did he just enjoy late summer weather? Hard to say, because there are no records. According to Split art historian Joško Belamarić and his book about famous people who visited Split, Sigmund Freud stayed in town just for a few days. It was even shorter than visit by George Bernard Shaw who was photographed in front of the Saint Domnio Cathedral in 1929.

Another great personality, Orson Welles, also loved Split, so much that his monument placed in front of the shopping mall Joke is much bigger than Freud's

Who knows, maybe Freud knew that one of the greatest men ever born in Split, writer and philosopher Marko Marulić, was the first one who ever used word psychology in a way we know it today. Where else would be better place for Freud to spend some time?