Apart from Croatian and Italian, linguistically the city is home to its own unique dialect of the Venetian language, Fiuman, with an estimated 20,000 speakers among the autochthonous Italians, Croats and other minorities. Historically Fiuman served as the main lingua franca among the many ethnicities inhabiting the multi-ethnic port city. In certain suburbs of the modern extended municipality the autochthonous population still speaks Chakavian, a dialect of Croatian.
Historically, Rijeka was called Tharsatica, Vitopolis (lit.'City of [Saint] Vitus'), or Flumen (lit.'River') in Latin. The city is called Rijeka in Croatian, Reka in Slovene, and Reka or Rika in the local dialects of the Chakavian language. It is called Fiume in Italian and in Fiuman Venetian. All these names mean 'river' in their respective languages.[9][10] Meanwhile, in German the city has been called Sankt Veit am Flaum/Pflaum (lit.'St. Vitus on the Flaum/Pflaum', with the name of the river being derived from Latin flumen).
Ex-municipality: consists of other towns and municipalities (outside Rijeka city proper) in a former official union of adjacent settlements which was disbanded in 1995. It includes towns and municipalities of , Viškovo, Klana, Kostrena, Čavle, Jelenje, Bakar and Kraljevica.
Kastav
Urban area: considered as adjacent area. It includes the ex-municipality along with towns and municipalities of , Lovran, Mošćenička Draga and Matulji, which form urban agglomeration.
Opatija
Metro area: considered territory of consolidated expansion. It includes towns and municipalities of , Novi Vinodolski, Vinodolska, Lokve, Fužine, Delnice and Omišalj, which all gravitate towards the City of Rijeka.
Crikvenica
according to the 2021 census, the city proper had a population of 107,964,[60] which included:[61]
Other groups, including Slovenes and Hungarians, formed less than 1% each.
The Croatian census recognized two settlements within the City of Rijeka - the city itself with a population of 128,384, and "Bakar" with a population of 240,[6] which is the village of Sveti Kuzam, separate from the neighboring town of Bakar. On 27 February 2014, Rijeka city council passed a decision to annex the settlement (named "Bakar-dio (Sv. Kuzam")) to the settlement of Rijeka.[62]
The following tables list the city's population, along with the population of ex-municipality (disbanded in 1995), the urban and the metropolitan area.
historian of Fiuman, Croatian and Yugoslav history
William Klinger
Fiuman historian whose work is considered the major milestone in the Rijeka historiography
Giovanni Kobler
Fiuman officer of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, lead inventor of the first torpedo
Giovanni Luppis
Fiuman-Hungarian mathematician and physicist, and the probable father of former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer
Paul Neményi
Hungarian professor of chemistry and physics
Sándor Alexander Riegler
Fiuman-Austrian physicist of the Fiume Academy, pioneer of ultrafast photography and aerodynamic studies
Peter Salcher
Croatrian historian
Petar Strčić
Croatian historian whose main focus of work were Rijeka and Istria
Danilo Klen
Tvornica "Torpedo" (the Torpedo factory). The first European prototypes of a self-propelled torpedo, created by , a retired naval engineer from Rijeka. The remains of this factory still exist, including a well-preserved launch ramp used for testing self-propelled torpedoes on which in 1866 the first torpedo was tested.
Giovanni Luppis
The building. Officially opened in October 1885, the grand theatre building includes work by the famous Venetian sculptor August Benvenuti and ceiling artist Franz Matsch, who collaborated with Ernst and Gustav Klimt.
Art installation "Balthazartown Beach" at beach GrčevoCityscape of square of Croatian National Theater I.P. Zajc and cargo containers train
Croatian National Theatre
Svetište Majke Božje Trsatske – the Sanctuary of . Built 135 m (443 ft) above sea level on the Trsat hill during the late Middle Ages, it represents the Guardian of Travellers, especially seamen, who bring offerings to her so she will guard them or help them in time of trouble or illness. It is home to the Gothic sculpture of the Madonna of Slunj and to works by the Baroque painter C. Tasce.
Our Lady of Trsat
a 13th-century fortress, which offers magnificent vistas from its bastions and ramparts, looking down the Rječina river valley to the docks and the Kvarner Gulf.
Trsat Castle
(or Trsat stairway), which links downtown Rijeka to Trsat. The stairway consists of 561 stone steps and was built for the pilgrims as the way to reach the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Trsat.
Petar Kružić staircase
Old gate or Roman arch. At first it was thought that this was a Roman Triumphal Arch built by the Roman Emperor but later it was discovered to be just a portal to the pretorium, the army command in late antiquity.
was included on CNN's list of the world's most iconic and unusual football stadiums in 2011.[63]
Stadion Kantrida
Art installation "Masters", a site-specific art installation by Czech artist Pavel Mrkus was permanently placed beneath the high ceiling vault on the inner balconies of Rijeka's fish market. The installation consists of a video segment - a projection of Mrkus's video recorded on the DIMI fishing trawler while fishing in the Kvarnerić waters – and it is accompanied by an audio segment of the sounds of the sea and a fishing boat that can only be heard in the fish market gallery. It is a story that pays homage to those who are never seen here, but without whom there would be no fish on the tables.
[64]
Art installation "Balthazartown Beach", a site-specific art installation found its place on the Grčevo beach, more commonly known as Pajol or Šestica, located at the very end of Pećine near the Viktor Lenac Shipyard. Under the mentorship of artist Igor Eškinja, students of the Academy of Applied Arts of the University of Rijeka designed a steel sculpture that changes the observer's experience of the environment and they created 15 inscriptions on a concrete plateau that encourage everyone to play and are visible only when in contact with water. The artistic process is inspired by the theme of Professor Balthazar, the world-famous and award-winning animated series, in which the scenographer used Rijeka as the primary inspiration in the creation of Balthazartown.
The 1980s American TV series The Winds of War was in part filmed in Rijeka and the surrounding areas.[79]
A stylised version of Fiume during the 1920s was one of the main settings in the 1992 movie Porco Rosso by world acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, as the town in front of which the fantastical "Hotel Adriano" is found and to which it is connected by a boat service taken by the protagonist.[80]
Bruce Sterling's November 2016 novel, written in collaboration with Warren Ellis, Pirate Utopia,[81] a dieselpunk alternative history, is set in Fiume (now Rijeka) in 1920 during the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro.[82]
The TV series Novine (The Paper),[83][84] which has been streaming on Netflix since April 2018, is based in Rijeka and the city was used as the main filming location.[85]
Recently Rijeka - with its historic industrial sites, unusual hilly setting, sweeping views and retro architecture - has become a popular location for the filming of TV-advertisements. Examples include advertisements for the Belgian internet provider Telenet, Japanese tire manufacturer Bridgestone, German retail chain DM, Japanese Honda Civic Type R cars, Ukrainian seafood restaurant chain Flagman, Slovenian soft drink brand Cockta, German car manufacturer Mercedes and others.[87][88]
![Coat of Arms in use during the italian domain of the city, approved in 1935[42]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Fiume-Stemma_%281924-1945%29.svg/68px-Fiume-Stemma_%281924-1945%29.svg.png)
![Varinate della Bandiera con lo stemma[2]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Flag_of_Fiume_%281924-1945%2C_Variant%29.svg/180px-Flag_of_Fiume_%281924-1945%2C_Variant%29.svg.png)
