Opatija Things to Do

This nice villa was built in 1844 and completely renovated in 2000. Its first owner was Iginio Scarpa; a wealthy merchant from Rijeka. He gave the villa the name of his deceased wife.

The ground floor of the villa is open to visitors. It is a large room with beautiful paintings on the ceiling.

Around Villa Angiolina there is a park with about 159 plant species. There you'll see banana trees, bamboos and also various palms.

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Villa “Angiolina”
built in 1844 by a patrician from Rijeka, merchant Higin Scarpa who named it after his late spouse Angiolina.
During that time noble families started to build their own villas and to invest in hotels transforming Opatija in important Adriatic turistic destination.

This church was probably built in 1420. Later it was rebuilt in 1506. It was renovated at the end of the eighteen century and it was enlarged in 1930. In the past it served as court trial and fairground to celebrate St. James' Day. Today concerts and weddings take place here.

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Slatina is the bigest Opatija beach, in center of the photo we see the hotel «Mozart».
I took this picture in October when there were just a few men on the beach, but of course in the summer time Slatina beach is crowded with people.

Near the Villa Angiolina on one side and St. Jacob abbey on another side is situated firs Opatija's Hotel built in 10 months in 1884 by the Southern Railway. Kvarner will be equipped with hot and cold baths, "the best cafe in the world" and its annex Amalija will accomadete elite guests such as the imperial family of Germany, the Rumanian royal couple and many more, and still later will be enriched with its Crystal ballroom.

Near the Girl with the seagull is situated a "Juraj Sporer" pavillion, where painters exhibit and visiting actors perform. In austrian times was known as the "Glacier" pastry shop, which was supploed on a daily basis with fresh cakes brought in bay fast trains from Vienna and (Buda)Pest. Beneath the caffe's fundament there still lies an odd bone or two of the first Opatijans, leftover after the relocation of the graveyard in 1885.

Beautiful park with the Villa Angiolina. The summer house was not the first buiding on that site, since the house of the Rijekan baron Haller von Hallerstein had also stood right there, on that peninsula that Iginio Scarpa bought for a trivial 600 forints from a local fellow of the Giusti family. Nevertheless, it was Villa Angiolina that provided the settlement with a place in history. Thanks to placing orders with the seamen, Scarpa cultivated a park around the villa, and today this is Opatija major botanical attraction: the washingtona seqouias and yuccas, black castilloa and japanese bamboo that grow before our eyes, two meters a day and many many more .

The story of Opatija, at least the one within our reach, begins here, in and around this chapel and abbey dedicated to Saint Jacob. A handful of Benedictines, most probably runaways from the destroyed Friulian abbey of San Pietro di Rosazzo, received the blessing of the Kastavian authorities in 1420 and erected their modest temple thet will, within a hundred or so years and along with the change of its ownership, serve as the condensed core for a new settlement that will precisly be named Opatija (Abbey).