Rijeka

Rijeka is Croatia's third city and its largest port, the least touristed place on the coast and the most different. It resembles neither Dubrovnik nor Split: this is not a medieval stone town but a nineteenth-century **industrial port city**, with wide streets, Austro-Hungarian facades, abandoned factories and cargo quays. Anyone looking for a postcard will not find one here; anyone wanting a city that works will. Its history is unusually tangled: sovereignty passed between **Austria, Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia**, and between 1920 and 1924 it was an **independent state** called the Free State of Fiume. That contested identity is the city's own subject. Above it stands **Trsat** castle on a rock over the bay, and below it **Korzo**, the main promenade. Eleven kilometres away lies **Opatija** — the resort of the nineteenth-century Austrian aristocracy, with its villas, gardens and long seaside promenade. The whole region is called **Kvarner**. Note: Rijeka was **European Capital of Culture in 2020**.