Villa Angiolina

About this place

The building from which tourism on the whole Adriatic began — not marketing, but chronology. It was built in **1844** by a merchant from Rijeka named **Iginio Scarpa** as a summer house, named after his late wife Angiolina. The villa itself is an elegant classical house, but what Scarpa did around it matters more: he planted a **botanical garden** with species brought from South America, Asia and Australia — among them the **camellia** that became Opatija''s emblem, along with sequoias, palms and bamboo. The villa received visitors from the Austrian imperial family, and the aristocracy followed them to the town, and the hotels were built. So **one private house created a resort**. Today the villa houses the **Croatian Museum of Tourism**: luggage, posters, hotel plate and photographs from the age of trains and sea cures — a subject more entertaining than it sounds, because it documents how the holiday itself was invented. Note: **the garden around it is free and always open**; the ticket is for the building alone.