Rijeka

Rijeka is reflected in Korzo, at Korzo you can read Rijeka. Anyone who, at least once, had a coffee at one of the terraces of numerous and picturesque café bars lined along this unusual promenade, would agree. City Tower, a symbol of Rijeka and a good example of a typical round tower access-point, which lead into the fortified town. Today it dominates the central part of Korzo, although during its lifetime it was overtopped by more recently constructed buildings.

St. Vitus’ Cathedral is the only Baroque rotunda of monumental proportions built on Croatian soil. The construction of this church, designed by the Jesuit architect G. Briano, began in 1638. It was made on the model of the famous Venetian church of Santa Maria della Salute. The location selected for the construction of the St. Vitus’ church was an elevated area at the heart of the then still medieval urban tissue. Initially, there was a small church of the same name, dedicated to the city's patron saint. The Jesuits, as the creators of the project, primarily decided to use the cult of the Miraculous Crucifix from the small church, which, according to popular legend, started bleeding when a certain Petar Lončarić threw a stone at it after exploding with rage over a gambling loss. The early Gothic crucifix is incorporated into the Baroque main altar of the new church, which, in the spirit of storytelling piety inherent to miraculous relics, also houses Lončarić's stone and a small bronze hand.

The Old Gateway or Roman Arch is not a Roman triumphal arch, as was once presumed, but a representative main entrance to the centre of the Late Antique command compound of the Roman Tarsatica, an ancient town on whose ruins the medieval Rijeka was built. Rijeka’s common people were right in calling this ancient monument simply the Gateway, while the name Roman Arch has been gradually accepted since Classicism, when it started to be documented and researched.

Those who peek into Rijeka’s computer museum and poke through its past will be amazed by the speed at which our technological future has become our past. The museum has over 2000 exhibits of international and Croatian computer, audio, video and photo technology. The first Croatian museum dedicated to childhood, games, books and toys loved by many generations before they "decided" to become all grown up and serious. The Childhood Museum offers more than 600 exhibits among which the oldest toy dates back to 1900. It is thematically divided into the Creation Park, Fossil Zone, Social Circle, Advertising Passage, Book Corner, Doll Empire, Sand Arena, Street Call and In Front of the Screen.

The Museum is working on a number of collections. These are collections of works by national artists Božidar Rašica, Romolo Venucci and Slavko Grčko, as well as collections of drawings, graphics, sculptures, posters, paintings, photographs and media art. The exhibition activities take place in Krešimirova Street as well as in the Mali salon, on Korzo.

The main part of this collection is Ivan Mažuranić’s library and his archive. The manuscript of Gundulić’s epic poem, Osman, from 1647 is stored here, a gift from Petar Petrović Njegoš. The library has eight thousand books and the archive with two thousands volumes. In 1947, the villa received the status of monument heritage. The symbol of the collection is the ring of Smail-aga Čengić, the main character in Mažuranić’s epic poem of the same name.

The Glagolitic alphabet exhibition in the University Library is a permanent exhibition with 127 items, each telling a story about the extensibility and importance of this alphabet in both Croatian and European cultural history. The alphabet was created in the 9th century and was dedicated to the Slavic peoples; its creators were Constantine (known as Cyril) and his older brother Methodius.