engleski

Industrial heritage in the provision of tourist and cultural services in the city of Rijeka/ Fiume/ Il patrimonio industriale nell' offerta turistica e culturale della citta' di Rijeka/ Fiume

The city of Rijeka evolved into Croatia's greatest port, as well as a University centre and the hub of its region's artistic and cultural life for its favourable connections with the mainland and its maritime, trade and industrial tradition. Furthermore, Rijeka is a significant European transit port, hosts the headquarters of numerous freight trades, and while the city remains strong in industry and various services, tourism flourishes mainly in its neighbourhood. Rijeka is the main hub for the Adriatic tourist traffic moving from Central Europe towards the central and southern Adriatic. Although Rijeka no longer supports large-scale organised vacation tourism because of its strongly developed industry, it has, as the second largest Croatian city, developed business tourism. In its search for a recognisable identity over the years, it nevertheless refuses to acknowledge that which had always made it both recognisable and known: that it is a harbour, industrial and transit centre. However banal and unattractive such a description may sound, it is our belief that it is precisely this aspect of Rijeka's identity, which is also in line with European trends, where its appeal and uniqueness should be sought in the city's culture tourism. Thanks to the efforts of individuals and the civic association Pro Torpedo, there is an awareness developing in Rijeka of the significance of the city's industrial heritage in its cultural, historical, technological, social and architectural worth. This awareness also led to some re-assessment of this heritage with the aim of its preservation and conversion, seeing that Rijeka - like many other European towns with a history of industry - hosts a great number of plants abandoned for reasons of new technologies or shifts in both the market and state or local politics. Rijeka's economy today is tied primarily to the sea, the harbour and related activities, but Rijeka is also a place which carries a river in its name. It is a small but significant litoral river of Rječina and its network of springs without which Rijeka would not exist. River water was not only a source of life for the city - its inabitants and fields - but also formed the basis of its centuries of development. Two hundred years ago the great industrial complexes were built near its lower stream, and twelve decades into the past marks the beginning of a modern water supply system, still in use today. Rječina's estuary was the city's first natural harbour. Smaller sailboats did their loading and unloading there until the mid-19th century, when the building of new artificial docks was necessitated by the arrival of steamboats. This embankment forms the core of today's port. The industrial zone along the Rječina, started in 1827 with the introduction of machines into papermaking, and introducing Rijeka into international trends through foreign investments, has a spcial symbolic meaning for the city. Today its largely abandoned industrial plants and complexes through their architectural and ambient value offer opportunities for conversion and the restoration of production, but they could also be a tourist attraction.

Rijeka; Sušak; industrial heritage; architecture of 19. th and 20. th century

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