City Tower

Crossing the street you will come to Corso, the famous promenade of Rijeka. Despite the numerous buildings, some of them of considerable height, it is still dominated by the City Clock Tower (Gradski toranj), erected upon the former sea gateway into the Old Town. The front of the tower reveals the several Baroque phases of its construction, with a richly decorated portal, a stone imperial coat of arms, and a relief representing the Austrian emperors Leopold I and Charles VI. The upper part of the tower, bearing the city clock since the 17th century, has repeatedly been renovated, the last important change being brought to it at the end of the 19th century. Below the clock lies a high relief of the city coat of arms, with two eagles whose heads are turned in the same direction, which is a heraldic curiosity. In their claws the eagles are holding an urn from which an inexhaustible flow of water runs, symbolising the inexhaustible devotion to the Austrian emperor. The tower is flanked by Early Classicist palaces, built in the late 1700s after destruction of the city walls. The material from the walls was used to fill up the medieval moat.
Corso was defined as a representative city feature in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Its southern border is dominated by the ex Royal Hotel (today 'Karolina riječka' department store), the upper-floor facades of which are decorated by floral ornaments, while the ground and mezzanine floors are of the contemporary iron construction with large glass panes. Further to the west, beyond the 'Ri' department store, stretches a row of Secession houses, the most interesting of which is the extremely narrow yellowish Milcenich-Cerniak House by E. Ambrosini.
The northern side is lined first with the Croatian Reading Room palace (Hrvatska čitaonica), still housing the reading room of the City Library. During its turbulent past of political clashes of the Italian and Croatian national resurrection, the palace frequently changed owners, and with them its national affiliation as well. After World War II it was occupied by Radio Rijeka, while the ground floor of its east wing houses the Mali Salon, permanent exhibition area of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. This Classicist palace was designed by A. Deseppi in the mid-1800s. Beneath the shady balcony he created a passageway and thus connected the square in front of the former city administration building in the Old Town with the representative Corso.
Across the Republic Square, but still in Corso, stands out the historicist facade of Filodrammatica, yet another palace designed by the naturalized Italian from Trieste, G. Zammattio, in the late 1800s. The lavishly decorated facade is even surpassed by the sumptuous decorations – sculptures, stuccoes and paintings - of the concert hall on the first floor. The ground floor is today occupied by the city coffee shop.
Corso ends at the Adriatic Square, dominated by three important buildings: the historicist Adriatic Palace (Palača Jadran) by F. Matijasić, seat of shipping companies since its construction in the late 1800s; the rationalist Rijeka Skyscraper (Riječki neboder), mockingly nick-named 'chest of drawers' by the local population upon its construction in the 1930s, work of U. Nordio, another renowned Trieste architect; and the Rijeka Bank administration building by K. Ostrogović, a renowned representative of modern Croatian architecture.
Continuing west towards the bus station on Žabica Square, you come to the Ploech Palace, an imposing building with richly decorated facades built in 1880 by G. Zammattio. Its owner was a precise mechanic who participated in the practical realization of the newly invented torpedo.
Adjacent to it stands the two-storey Neo-Gothic Capuchin Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, a favourite motive of Rijeka postcards. Upon his pilgrimage to Lourdes, Bernardin Škrivanić, superior of Rijeka Capuchin monastery, decided to erect in Rijeka a representative building, hoping it would become a new centre of pilgrimage. The project was devised mainly by C. Budinich, known by his theoretical research into the Gothic heritage. In this spirit he conceived the building in Venetian Gothic style, inappropriate to Rijeka's tradition, more readily exposed to the northern influence. The construction started in the early 1900s, but extended through several decades, as it obviously surpassed the possibilities of the Capuchin community. It has remained unfinished, in fact, because the front was to be completed by a bell-beacon tower, according to the original design. Furthermore, it has never been able to compete with the centuries-long tradition of Our Lady of Trsat.
Still further ahead west lies a complex known as ‘Benčić’, after the name of a company that was its last (industrial) occupant, a witness of the 250 years of uninterrupted industrial-manufacturing production, starting from the sugar refinery through tobacco factory to metallurgy. Its most valuable part is by all means the administration building of the former Sugar Refinery, in the interior of which are concealed sumptuous frescoes and stuccoes. The once sea-facing portal is adorned by heads with sugar cubes in their hair. Still further west you go past the front of the old Rijeka lazaretto with a splendid Baroque portal. The inscription above it gives 1722 as the year of the beginning of its construction and glorifies its investor, the Austrian emperor Charles VI. The building of the railway station, once the key point of all departures and arrivals, is a Neo-Classicist construction by the Budapest-born specialist F. Pfaff. The complex, opened in 1890, was originally conceived as a row of pavilions connected by low wings. The impression of monumentality was achieved by placing it in retraction from the street, thus creating a small square in front of it, which distinguishes it from the much higher buildings around it. The street, lined with hundred-year-old plane-trees, continues west beyond the square, but this just about as far as a reasonable tour of the city centre should go, so we will end our sightseeing tour here.