Opatija History
Opatija, Italian Abbazia, is a resort town and one of the best-known coastal resorts in Istria situated on the Kvarner (gulf) of the Adriatic Sea. The town's name derives from the old Benedictine opatija (“abbey”) of San Giacomo al Palo, situated in the main park. The city was built around this Benedictine abbey, mentioned for the first time in the 12th century. Opatija started to write its tourist story in 1844 with the construction of the first summerhouse - Villa Angiolina, surrounded by the exotic park. Austrian and Hungarian nobility built several other striking villas in the 19th century. Opatija became a resort, where the royal families and men of distinction (Wilhelm II, Franz Joseph I, Gustav Mahler, Isadora Duncan etc.) used to winter.
Opatija arises under the Učka Mountain (1400m); it is the biggest city of the Eastern coast of Istra and the most important tourist center.
In 1889, Opatija was declared a place of treatment for breathing diseases; in the 1896 it has introduced the electric lighting and in 1908 the first tram.
By the end of the 19th century, the town was the winter and the climatic health resort of the worldly Central Europe with hotels and boarding houses, offering the services of dozens of physicians in sanatoriums in stylish villas. The Opatija Riviera developed as a tourist and vacation center stimulated by the Trieste-Rijeka railway in 1873. The railway communication with Vienna, Zagreb and Budapest in particular enabled its rapid development. Austrian before World War I, Opatija was ceded to Italy in 1919 and returned to Yugoslavia after World War II.
During the Croatian-Serb War refugees lived in local hotels until about 2002. Large families lived in one room. Slowly the hotels are being renovated since there was no real upkeep for 5-7 years. The Serbs bombed areas of Rijeka, the industrial city next to Opatija.
Sheltered from cold winds, immersed in the rich, always green vegetation, Opatija enjoys all the benefits of a mild Mediterranean climate.