Welcome to Rijeka!
Rijeka (literally "River" in Croatian language) is a city in Kvarner Bay, a northern inlet of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. It is the principal seaport of the country. It had about 129,000 inhabitants in 2011, with the greater city area reaching up to 200,000, and is Croatia's third largest city. In 2020 Rijeka is the "European Capital of Culture" with the motto Port of Diversity.
Rijeka (local Chakavian: Reka, German: Sankt Veit am Flaum, Slovene: Reka) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia (after Zagreb and Split). It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea, and in 2021 had a population of 108,622 inhabitants.
Historically, because of its strategic position and its excellent deep-water port, the city was fiercely contested, especially between the HRE, Hungary (serving as the Kingdom of Hungary's largest and most important port), Italy, and Croatia, changing rulers and demographics many times over centuries. According to the 2011 census data, the majority of its citizens are Croats, along with small numbers of Serbs,
Bosniaks, and Italians.
Rijeka is the main city and county seat of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County. The city's economy largely depends on shipbuilding (shipyards "3. Maj" and "Viktor Lenac Shipyard") and maritime transport. Rijeka hosts the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc, first built in 1765, as well as the University of Rijeka, was founded in 1973 but with roots dating back to 1632 and the local Jesuit School of Theology. Apart from Croatian and Italian, linguistically the city is home to its own unique dialect of the Venetian language, Fiuman, with an estimated 20,000 speakers among the autochthonous Italians, Croats, and other minorities. Historically Fiuman served as the main lingua franca between the many ethnicities inhabiting the multi-ethnic port city. In certain suburbs of the modern extended municipality the autochthonous population still speaks Chakavian, a dialect of Croatian.
In 2016, Rijeka was selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2020, alongside Galway, Ireland.