Fiume is Croatia's third largest city by population after the capital Zagreb and Split, a number that rises to 305 505 if its urban area is included. Situated along the coast of the Adriatic Sea, it is the main city of the Bay of Kvarner (or Kvarner) and the capital of the coastal-mountain region, the seat of a university and an archbishopric. Rijeka is part of the Italian geographical region, the eastern borders of which traditionally indicate the Julian Alps and the Kvarner Gulf, to which Dante Alighieri also referred.

For centuries disputed due to its strategic position and the presence of an important shipyard, it was a free port from 1719, formerly an autonomous entity (also called Terra Sancti Viti ad flumen) of the crown of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1779 to 1919 as part of the Austrian and then Austro-Hungarian Empire, later forming the Free State of Rijeka from 1920 to 1924; It was then part of the Kingdom of Italy from 1924 to 1945 as the capital of the province of the same name before passing to Yugoslavia in 1947, and after the latter's dissolution, to Croatia in 1991. Consequently, the ethnic composition of its inhabitants has also changed over the centuries. According to the 2011 census, there were 106,136 Croats (82.52% of the total inhabitants), 8,446 Serbs (6.57%), 2,650 Bosnians (2.06%), 2,445 Italians (1.90%) and 1,090 Slovenes (0.85%) in Rijeka.

In the city of Rijeka there is the Croatian National Theatre HNK Ivan pl. Zajc, an important theatre founded in 1765 where opera and ballet performances take place, as well as the seat of the Italian Drama of Rijeka, and the University of Rijeka, founded in 1973 but with much older roots, since they go back to the Rijeka School of Theology, whose origin dates back to 1632. Rijeka has been chosen to be the European Capital of Culture 2020, together with Galway in Ireland.

Translated with DeepL