Rijeka

Rijeka occupies a narrow coastal strip where the Rječina River meets the wide expanse of Kvarner Bay. Here, steep hills rise so abruptly from sea level that the city’s outline resembles a theater stage set against a mountainous backdrop. This configuration has shaped Rijeka’s character more decisively than any single architectural plan could. Bounded on three sides by the ranges of Učka, Risnjak and Velika Kapela, and opening to the Adriatic on its fourth flank, the city has long served as the natural maritime gateway for central Europe.

From the earliest records, Rijeka (Croatian: Riječ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ka; Italian: Fiume) owed its fate to that inlet of deep water. Its port lies forty metres below the surrounding ridges, capable of welcoming ships that traverse the continent’s low passes from Hungary and beyond. Two principal routes begin here: one cuts northeast through the Dinaric Alps to the Pannonian plain, the other sweeps northwest across the Postojna Gate to Slovenia and Austria. In either direction, merchants and armies alike found Rijeka’s calm harbor indispensable.

This strategic prominence drew rival claimants over centuries. Once contested between the Holy Roman Empire and the maritime republic of Venice, it later passed through Venetian and Habsburg hands before emerging in the modern era as a flashpoint between Italy and Yugoslavia. Between 1918 and 1991 the city answered to no fewer than eight distinct administrations, a churn of sovereignty that lent its people an acute sense of local identity. One inhabitant born in 1917 might—without relocating—have held passports from Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Free State of Fiume, the Kingdom of Italy, German-occupied territory, Yugoslavia, the fascist Regency of Carnaro and finally the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Such rapid shifts shaped both the civic imagination and the demographic profile, as Croats, Italians, Serbs, Bosniaks and others coexisted in a port where multiple tongues and traditions intertwined.

Today, roughly 85 per cent of Rijeka’s 108,000 residents identify as Croat, with lingering Italian and other minority communities preserved in pockets of the city. Among them survive some twenty‑thousand speakers of Fiuman, the local variant of Venetian. For generations, Fiuman served as the commerce tongue of the port, even touching dialects of Croatian in the suburbs, where vestiges of the Chakavian dialect endure. On the streets around Korzo, the broad pedestrian promenade at the city’s heart, these languages mingle in the calls of market vendors and the idle greetings of old friends.

Rijeka’s economy remains rooted in the sea. Two shipyards—3. Maj and Viktor Lenac—stand among the largest industrial employers, their cranes articulated like metal cranes against the skyline. Maritime freight and passenger services still ply the bay, linking Croatia’s main port with the Adriatic islands and international lines. Yet as much as the docks define the labor market, culture has reasserted itself in recent years. In 2020 Rijeka bore the title of European Capital of Culture, sharing the honor with Galway, Ireland. With a repertoire spanning classical theater at the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc—first erected in 1765—to contemporary art at the Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, the city has anchored its post-industrial identity in performance and exhibition spaces that speak to its diverse past.

A stroll through the Old Town recalls this layering of epochs. The City Tower stands at the foot of Korzo, its round medieval form once an entry point to the fortified town. Nearby, the Governor’s Palace now houses the Maritime and Historical Museum of the Croatian Coast, where mariners’ artifacts and family portraits trace Rijeka’s transformation from small fishing port to imperial entrepôt. Beneath the cathedral dedicated to St. Vitus lies the Grivica tunnel network, carved by Italian forces in the early 1940s. Visitors can walk its 330‑metre length and imagine the anxiety of civilians seeking shelter from bombers overhead.

Elevated above the center, Trsat hill bears a fortress whose stones date back to the late thirteenth century. Trsat Castle, sitting 138 metres above sea level, dominates the approach from the east. Since 1288 it has offered refuge and vantage, first to medieval clergy, later to Habsburg officers. Today its ramparts host art exhibitions, concerts and literary readings, while below the castle’s Baroque church, pilgrimage traffic surges each August for the Feast of the Assumption. Pilgrims come to honor Our Lady of Trsat, the most important devotional site in western Croatia, drawn by votive offerings that fill the chapel of gifts.

Rijeka’s carnival season represents another form of pilgrimage. Established in 1982, the Riječki karneval unfolds between January and March, peaking on the weekend before Lent. On its opening day, the city’s mayor hands the symbolic key to Meštar Toni, the carnival master, who then presides over festive processions and a charity ball at the Governor’s Palace. Hundreds of masked groups parade along Korzo, joined by children in costumed ranks from across the region. In recent years, over fifteen thousand participants in more than two hundred carnival troupes have drawn crowds exceeding one hundred thousand onlookers. These celebrations recall Rijeka’s cosmopolitan heritage, as Venetian masks mix with Slavic costumes and modern satire.

Summer transforms the coastal margins into a bath of Mediterranean leisure. Beaches to the west, at Kantrida and Preluk, offer pebbled edges and five sea pools carved into the rock; to the east, Pećine and Kostrena give way to secluded coves. Buses shuttle sunbathers to each stretch, and parking lots stand ready beside the shore. Yet the Alps lie scarcely ten kilometres inland, so that on crisp winter mornings skiers ascend to Platak resort by cable car and find slopes still folded in snow, the Adriatic islands shining below through breaks in the clouds. Snowfall is brief—rarely exceeding three days in a year—but the bora wind scours the hillsides, leaving frosted peaks that contrast vividly with the olive groves by the sea.

The climate here is classified as humid subtropical. Peak summer temperatures exceed 30 °C on just twenty days annually, while winter lows fall below freezing only once. Rainfall is frequent through all seasons; fog drifts in about four days a year, chiefly in winter. The warmest air recorded at the local station, at 120 metres of elevation, reached exactly 40 °C on 19 July 2007, while the coldest dipped to −12.8 °C on 10 February 1956.

Beyond the natural world, Rijeka has long served as a backdrop for filmmakers and writers. In the 1960s several of the Winnetou westerns were shot among its outskirts. In the 1970s the American miniseries The Winds of War found suitable architecture here, while the Italian Regency of Carnaro—Gabriele D’Annunzio’s proto‑fascist experiment of 1919—ranks among the city’s more peculiar episodes. That short‑lived “Reggenza Italiana del Carnaro” recognized Lenin’s Soviet Republic, embraced avant‑garde aesthetics and even tolerated non‑normative gender expressions, all under a constitution penned by D’Annunzio himself. Later, in 1992, Hayao Miyazaki transposed 1920s Fiume to the animated Hotel Adriano of Porco Rosso, capturing the port’s interwar elegance in fluid strokes of paint. More recently, Netflix’s drama Novine has played out on Rijeka’s streets since 2018, and the 2019 feature The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard filmed sequences here as well.

Architecture reveals further layers. Along Korzo, secessionist façades frame cafés and boutiques; the cathedral of St. Vitus retains its baroque nave; the Roman Arch and the Old Gateway stand as silent witnesses to the city’s imperial chapters. On the other bank of the Rječina, the former town of Sušak—once a rival Croatian enclave—merged with Fiume in 1945. Today their union is commemorated by a broad pedestrian plaza over the buried river, a favorite meeting spot that belies the water coursing beneath.

Museums abound for those willing to devote time to exploration. The Natural History Museum, with its aquarium and reptile collection, appeals to families; the Rijeka City Museum covers numismatics, theatre costumes and wartime artifacts; the small Peek & Poke exhibits vintage computing relics—bulky keyboards from the dawn of personal computing. The sacral collections at the Cathedral and at Trsat display reliquaries, chalices and paintings spanning centuries of devotion. Around every corner, one senses the city’s tug of war between industry and artistry.

For a view of modern life, one may descend to the main market—Placa—where early morning nets of fish arrive beside crates of local fruit. Here the city’s original cosmopolitan spirit asserts itself in the scent of smoked scampi, the accents of elderly vendors who recall Austro‑Hungarian rule, and the laughter of youngsters racing along tiled aisles.

Outside the urban core lie other diversions. Motorsport enthusiasts drive ten kilometres north to the Grobnik circuit, where they may test their skills or watch professionals curve through hairpin turns. For stargazers, the Astronomical Centre atop Sveti Križ hill offers telescopes trained on dark skies, with sweeping panoramas of the bay below. And if the lure of saltwater yields, diving centers around the promontory unlock underwater cliffs dotted with gorgonian corals, sea caves and even wrecks.

Education and the arts intersect at the University of Rijeka, formally established in 1973 but tracing some roots to a Jesuit theology school of the 1600s. Its faculties spread through the city, drawing students who animate the streets and cafés, speaking Croatian, Italian, Fiuman or English as they debate history, engineering or literature.

Cultural memory shimmers in the smallest details. One life‑belt from the Titanic rests in the Naval Museum, a legacy of the Carpathia’s voyages to and from New York, often manned by Croatian crew. In the early twentieth century, Fiume boasted weekly transatlantic passenger service, and villagers still recall the day when ocean liners tied at the quay and letter‑carrying pigeons flew overhead.

In each of these facets—geography, history, industry, art—Rijeka reveals complexity rather than a single narrative. It resists easy definitions, preferring instead to speak in layers of stone and steel, in echoing voices that slip between the Adriatic and the hills. For the visitor who watches the sun set behind Učka, lights dancing on the water’s surface, the city’s essence emerges not in grand monuments alone but in the flux of identities that have shaped its streets. There is a quiet poetry in a harbor built for commerce, now welcoming skiffs of joyriders and cargo ships alike, and a subtle dignity in a community that has weathered empire, ideology and war, only to retain a spirit that is both resilient and receptive. In Rijeka, the river runs beneath a plaza and the mountains press close to the sea, and in that embrace one finds a city both anchored and free.