engleski

The Governor’s Palace in Rijeka as an Architectural Manifestation of the Hungarian Socio-Political Body at the Close of the Nineteenth Century

After the Croatian-Hungarian Settlement of 1868, Rijeka became territory of the Kingdom of Hungary and its only maritime outlet. Administered and fuelled by Hungarian capital, Rijeka saw a period of astounding economic development, primarily with the expansion of the urban fabric, which completely changed not only the landscape and the overall appearance of the town, but also its social and cultural structure. Built primarily by Hungarian architects, the monumental buildings served principally as tools of political assertion and symbols of the power of the Hungarian socio- political body. The construction of the new Governor’s Palace was announced when Count Batthyány was appointed Governor of Fiume in 1890. The design and construction of the future Palace were entrusted to Alajos Hauszmann, a prominent Hungarian architect and professor at the Budapest Polytechnic. Hauszmann was revered for his rich architectural oeuvre, for buildings which exerted a profound influence on the development of Hungarian architecture of the period and which had already become well- known symbols of Budapest as a modern capital. Viewed by the authorities as a displaced part of a single Hungarian territory (a colony) and driven by the increasing intensity of the town’s economy, Rijeka symptomatically strived to adopt features of a modern Hungarian city. The carefully chosen location provided the authorities with an ideal setting for the Palace, designed as a monumental Palladian villa with a dominantly elevated position and a sublime presence in the city panorama. To ensure the desired position in the cityscape of Rijeka, the new complex necessitated a complete urban reconstruction of the upper town area. This paper aims to demonstrate the intricate and multiply coded mechanism of the Governor’s Palace as an instance of Hungarian hegemony and colonialism. It is part of the author’s research conducted within the Heritage Urbanism project funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ-2032).

Governor's Palace ; Rijeka ; Hegemony ; Unconscious ; Palladianism

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