Imenik Splita | Telefonski
In the digital age, the city of Diocletian moves fast. But sometimes, in a konoba on Matejuška, an old telefonski imenik still sits on a shelf—yellowed, torn, obsolete. And when the power goes out during a jugo wind, someone will open it, smile at a long-gone number, and remember a time when a phone call was a commitment, and a directory was a neighborhood.
In an age where a contact is a thumbprint away on a glowing screen, it’s easy to forget the quiet thunder of paper. For generations, the Telefonski imenik Splita (Split Telephone Directory) was more than a utility. It was a census, a social map, a lifeline, and a surprisingly intimate portrait of the city beneath Marjan Hill. Before the internet, before the mobile phone, the white and yellow pages of the Split telephone directory sat next to the kuhinjski stol (kitchen table), near the kava (coffee), and often under a jar of homemade prošek .
In the old book, you could trace a family’s history: a son taking over his father’s automehaničar (auto mechanic) shop, a daughter listed separately after marriage, a number disappearing because someone had passed away. It was a living document of the city’s heartbeat. telefonski imenik splita
By J. Č.
Today, Split has a digital directory. It’s more efficient. But it lacks soul. You cannot browse it over a rakija on a rainy winter night. You cannot find a plumber by seeing which name has the largest, boldest type (the old signal of “this guy is reliable”). You cannot accidentally discover that your new colleague lives in the same building because their number is three digits away from yours. The Split telephone directory is dead. Long live the memory of it. In the digital age, the city of Diocletian moves fast
The final blow? The rise of the online imenik —impersonal, fast, and forgettable. The physical directory was discontinued for general households around 2016. Today, a mint-condition Split telephone directory from 1985 is a nostalgic artifact, sold at antikvarijati (second-hand bookshops) for a few kuna (now euros). The disappearance of the Telefonski imenik Splita isn’t just about technology. It’s about a loss of context .
You let the book fall open—the spine always broke at the letter “K” (Kovač, Kulušić, Kardum). You ran your finger down the column, past the caffe bar owners and konobari (waiters). You muttered the number as you dialed the rotary phone. If you got a wrong number, you didn’t apologize coldly. You said, “Oprostite, dobra dušo, krivo sam okrenuo” (Sorry, good soul, I dialed wrong). Because the person on the other end might be your neighbor. The first crack came with the 1990s privatization and the arrival of mobile phones. By the early 2000s, T-Com (formerly HPT) began printing fewer copies. The 2010 edition was the last thick volume. Why? Because the youth of Split had moved to messaging apps. They no longer needed to know that “Bero from Žnjan” had a number ending in 548. In an age where a contact is a
Share your memories below. Published in the “Retro Dial” series.