Grand Hotels Around the Kvarner Bay: Seaside Hospitality Between Austria and Hungary

Jasenka Gudelj

doi:10.30687/mdccc/2280-8841/2020/01/010

Abstract

The hotel architecture around the Kvarner bay represents a specific Austro-Hungarian response to the Riviera phenomenon, made possible by the railway connections to the continental capitals of the Empire with the port of Rijeka. Through a detailed comparison between different investments and realisations, the article explores the ways of dealing with the hotellerie in the coastal area administratively divided between Austria, Hungary and Croatia in the last decades of the 19th century and the years leading to WWI.

Highlights

The grand hotel, one of the emblematic phenomena of the 19th century, is usually referred to as a apt illustration of the changing society of its time. These hospitality structures reach the level of lavishness previously reserved to noble palaces and become somewhat liberal places of public encounter across space and class
The golden age of both city and leisure hotels in Europe is closely entwined with the development of the railway system and tourism, in particular with the pleasure of passing harsh winter months of inland Europe at the Mediterranean and the summer at the Northern seaside, which became a matter of upper-class habit in the second part of the century
The earliest and the most prominent responses in the Austria-Hungary to the French and Italian riviera stimuli are to be found around the Kvarner bay in the north-eastern Adriatic, worth looking at in a more detailed comparative perspective

Summary

Conclusion

The comparative analysis of the emblematic examples of grand hotels of the “k.u.k riviera” in the period between the Austro-Hungarian agreement and the World War I confirms these as buildings of urban-scale importance, in both historical and architectural terms. The investments and habits brought from Hungary are present in luxurious and large hotels in Crikvenica, containing facilities with special pools and baths, enabling common inside bathing. These devices were given minor importance in the mainly Austrian resort of Opatija, where individual inside bath-tubs were privileged. Both resorts developed the system of lavish parks and seaside walking paths, as well as sea-bathing buildings facilitating and “civilising” the activity the locals were practising for centuries. The existence of grand hotels favoured mixing of people, customs and languages of all social ex- the North-East Adriatic seashore. traction within an already multifaceted society of

Rijeka and Sušak Between Hungarian Investments and Local Capital

Crikvenica: an Archduke in Action