Statue of Grgur Ninski

The Statue of Grgur Ninski (Gregory of Nin) is a bronze monument by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, standing outside the Golden Gate (Zlatna vrata), the northern entrance to Diocletian's Palace in Split. At roughly 8.5 metres tall including its pedestal, it is one of Meštrović's best-known public works.

Meštrović cast the statue in 1929, and it originally stood inside the Peristyle, at the heart of the palace. During the Italian occupation of Split in the Second World War it was taken down and put into storage; it was not returned to public display until 1954, when it was re-erected in its current spot outside the Golden Gate.

The figure honours Grgur Ninski, a 10th-century bishop of Nin who resisted attempts to ban the use of the Croatian language and the Glagolitic script in church services, and who is remembered as an early defender of Croatian linguistic identity. A local tradition holds that rubbing the statue's oversized left big toe brings good luck; decades of visitors doing so have polished the bronze there to a bright shine, in contrast to the weathered green patina everywhere else on the figure. Meštrović cast two further versions of the statue, in Nin and in Varaždin, and both have acquired the same toe-rubbing custom — though the Split cast, framed by the palace walls, remains the one most travellers stop at before or after a Split gulet cruise.