PRESS INFO
Trg Stjepana Radića 1c | HR-51 260 Crikvenica | Tel: +385 51 784 101, Fax: +385 51 781 056
| | OIB: 78748346087 | ŽR: 2402006-1100111622
WELCOME
Welcome to the Crikvenica Riviera, a riviera with unique identity that is often attributed to its valuable archaeological legacy, to a tradition of tourism dating back more than a century, and to a natural environment of great beauty and diversity. Crikvenica, Dramalj, Jadranovo and Selce welcome you like a friend welcomes a friend, generouslysharing theharmony of sunlight, fresh air, pleasant scents of the sea, the rocky coastal landscape, and an abundance of green parks and charming walks. Enjoy the benefits of the Mediterranean climate, take a walk along the seafront, hear the seagulls calling, and leave behind the hectic pace of everyday life... We wish you a pleasant stay here, genuinely hoping that someday soon the places of this Riviera might be included in your personal store of treasured memories!
CONTENTS:
Riviera friend
A look in the past
What to see
Where to stay
Where to eat
Where body and soul breathe
Paradise for romantics and adventurers
A tide of experiences
Passion for movement
When streets start dancing
Excursions
Magical Vinodol
Diversity of the surrounding area
Interesting facts
Useful information
Riviera friend
CRIKVENICA RIVIERA
Riviera Crikvenica comprises charming, gentle and picturesque tourist destinations of Crikvenica, Dramalj, Jadranovo and Selce. Each of these destinations has its own unique identity, formed by the valuable ancient traces with tradition of tourism dating back more than a century and with local people who are long devoted to the sea and to fishing. In diversity of the area's natural landscapes, reaching from the coast over the green Vinodol Valley to the forests in the continental hinterland, makes Riviera Crikvenica a particularly attractive tourism destination.
Crikvenica Tourist Board
Trg Stjepana Radića 1c, 51260 Crikvenica
Telephone: +385 51 784 101, fax: +385 51 781 056
e-mail:
CRIKVENICA
In addition to beautiful natural surroundings, crystal clear sea, fresh air, and traditionally hospitable people, one of the main reasons for choosing Crikvenica for your holidays is healthy Mediterranean climate with mild winters, and warm yet not too hot summers - the ideal conditions for developing health tourism over a century. The area's long, sand and pebble beaches, with numerous play attractions for children, are all connected by a natural promenade through its lush Mediterranean vegetation. Here are plenty of opportunities to sunbathe, swim, walk, cycle or enjoy recreational sports. Crikvenica's tourism offer reflects the valuable historical and cultural heritage of the local area. This includes events such as the traditional Fishermen's Week, Ad Turres Days, the Aquarium, filled with more than 150 species of fish, the ever-popular Love Path, the Crikvenica Town Museum, and a fine variety of galleries. Along with that, the area's extensive sporting, entertainment, cultural and gastronomic programmes, and its unique mingling of sun, fine air, scents of the sea and of pine trees, make Crikvenica an appealing tourist destination.
INFO: Crikvenica Tourist Information Center
Trg Stjepana Radića 1c, 51260 Crikvenica
Telephone: +385 51 241 051, fax: +385 51 241 867
e-mail:
DRAMALJ
Connected to Crikvenica by a seaside promenade, Dramalj spreads all the way to the Kačjak peninsula. Today this area has 1400 residents and it started developing at the end of the 19th century, following the expansion of nearby Crikvenica.
Accommodation is provided in numerous private villas, newly built properties and private apartments, holiday homes and hotels. Dramalj provides several well-tended beaches equipped with various facilities (some of these beaches have won awards for the best kept beaches in Croatia), and many cultural events such as the Summer Carnival, which is particularly attractive.
INFO: Dramalj Tourist Information Center
Gajevo šetalište 48, 51265 Dramalj
Telephone: +385 51 786 363
e-mail:
JADRANOVO
Jadranovo is a tourist destination, ideal for a quiet holiday. It is known for unspoilt natural surroundings, numerous coves and romantic and isolated beaches. A coastal promenade and walking trails criss-crossing the hinterland are just right for pleasant walks, even on hot summer days. The area's long tradition of welcoming visitors, its hospitable people, wonderful nature and comfortable accommodation in family homes, as well as fine gastronomic choices, are just a small part of what Jadranovo has to offer its visitors.If you decide to visit Jadranovo, or to return here, we are confident that it will be a memorable experience in a place just right for unwinding and relaxing. For this is where you can escape the hectic pace of everyday life and find your own oasis of quietness, at least for a while.
INFO: Jadranovo Tourist Information Center
Ivani bb, 51264 Jadranovo
Telephone: +385 51 246 160, fax: +385 51 788 568
e-mail:
SELCE
This typical coastal town, once a village of fishermen and stonemasons, today makes an interesting holiday destination with a tradition of tourism reaching back more than a century. Selce has won many awards for the excellence of its tourism offer and the overall appearance of the town. Selce is a perfect place for pleasant summer holidays, with well-tended Blue Flag beaches - a best guarantee of a crystal clear sea, a seaside promenade, and many cultural, entertainment and sporting events (folklore, concerts, painting exhibitions, fish festivals on the waterfront, sport-fishing for visitors, sailing regattas and much more). The town also has a diving center with diving school and various water sport facilities. Selce can accommodate several thousand visitors in private homes and hotels, holiday villas and two campsites.
INFO: Selce Tourist Information Center
Šetalište Ivana Jeličića 1, 51266 Selce
Telephone: +385 51 765 165, fax: +385 51 768 108
e-mail:
Position
Crikvenica is located in Kvarner Bay in the Adriatic Sea. Its good traffic connections (mainland, sea, air) is just one of the preconditions why tourism began developing here more than one century ago. The Crikvenica area can be easily reached from many towns throughout Central Europe. The island of Krk also hosts Rijeka Airport, only twenty kilometres from Crikvenica.
Climate
Crikvenica is sheltered from strong winds and this favourable position gives the local climate a combination of Mediterranean and continental features. The average temperature in winter is ca. 9 °C, and in summer around 23 °C.
The sea air is noted for its cleanliness and for containing dispersed trace elements. A salinity of 4 % and continuous currents from south-east to north-west make the seawater here particularly clear. Average sea temperatures in summer reach from 23 °C in June to 27 °C in July and August.
A look in the past
The best-known map of the Roman Empire, the Tabula Peutingeriana from the 3rd century AD, indicates the position of a station in the northern part of the Liburnian coast between Tarsatica (today, Rijeka) and Senia (Senj). This station, marked on the map as Ad Turres, had a military garrison that protected the entire local area and the important Roman road that connected the north of Italy (the town of Aquileia), through Tergesta (Triest) and Tarsatica (Rijeka), with Dalmatia.
In the area of Ad Turres at the turn of the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD was the workshop of Sextus Metilius Maximus with facilities for producing ceramic items.
The history of Crikvenica, Dramalj, Jadranovo and Selce was closely intertwined with the development of the nearby fertile valley of Vinodol and its medieval fortified towns of Drivenik, Grižane and Bribir. During the Middle Ages, each of these towns had its own harbour on the coast, which led to the development of fishing villages around them. The stone houses were built in a very specific way, characterised by vaults and small courtyards enclosed by high stone walls. Under the Frankopan rule, the free citizens of the towns in the Vinodol area compiled the Vinodol Law, the first Croatian legal document. This was in 1288, at a time when many parts of Europe were still regarded as barbarian.
The Crikvenica area also produced many skilled fishermen, and the beginning of the 20th century saw the rapid rise of tourism as the primary economic activity.
A new era of social and economic prosperity began in 1993 with the establishment of the Town of Crikvenica as a local government within the independent Republic of Croatia.
CRIKVENICA
Before the area of the present town became populated, people lived in the hinterland, around Kotor on a nearby hill. The name Kotor comes from the Latin name Ad turres, which was translated as "kod tor" (at the towers) by the Croats after their arrival. The parish of Kotor used to be part of the small medieval town of Grižane. Local people engaged in agriculture, livestock breeding and fishing, and learned to grow vines from the Roman people domiciled here. In 1225, the noble family of Frankopan came into possession of the Vinodol parish and continued to rule the area until the Croatian noblemen Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan were executed in Wiener Neustadt in 1671.
In 1412, Nikola IV Frankopan renovated the old church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, built a monastery, and gave it to the Pauline monks, which was confirmed by a deed of donation in which the name of Crikvenica was first time mentioned in an official document. In the following centuries, until the Pauline order was abolished in 1786, Paulists, also sometimes known as the white friars because of their white habits, played an important role in almost all domains of life of local people.
The former Pauline church preserved many works of art and traces of renewals from different style periods. These all attest to the devotion of the Paulists and local people to the Virgin Mary, who had been worshipped in the Dubračina area from the early Middle Ages.
Major settlement of Crikvenica as we know it today started in the 17th century, especially in 1776 after fire devastated a great part of Kotor. Among the destroyed buildings was the parish church of St. Simon, so the center of the parish was relocated to Crikvenica. This was a period when the Ottomans and Venetians are no longer any threat, and so the life along the coast becomes much safer. But due to the lack of arable land, people from Crikvenica soon started turning more towards the sea and quickly gained a reputation as the best fishermen in the northern Adriatic.
In the mid-19th century, local people started emigrating to other continents, and for their accomplishments and innovations the group of fishermen who settled in San Pedro and Seattle become famous. People from Crikvenica were also widely known as skilled stonemasons and bricklayers.
At the end of the 19th century, Crikvenica was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A period of intense tourism development - especially health tourism - followed the construction of the first wooden swimming baths in 1888 and the hotels Therapia (1895) and Miramare (1906). Over time, as its reputation for tourism continued to grow, Crikvenica became one of the leading tourist destination on the Adriatic and a popular destination for many generations of visitors.
DRAMALJ
In the beginning, Dramalj was a fishing harbour surrounded by olive groves owned by people who lived in the valley of Tribalj. It was first mentioned at the beginning of the 18th century, when it was permanently populated and known as Zagorje-Dramalj. The settlement formed and began to grow around the small church of St. Helen, which was renovated and expanded at the beginning of the 19th century. The church was built in the place of an old chapel, which had been Baroqued and expanded in the 18th century, when Dramalj was a chaplaincy of the parish of Belgrad. In 1796, a famous artist from Rijeka, Giuseppe Capovilla, made a marble altar for this church.
Construction of the first tourist accommodation facilities began between the two world wars. Over the following years, Dramalj grew into a tourist destination that particularly appeals to weekenders and holidaymakers.
JADRANOVO
The oldest preserved traces of human settlements here date back to the Early Stone Age (6500-4000 BC).
In the Early Iron Age, the cove of Lokvišće in Jadranovo was used as a shelter and a harbour for the Drivenik fort. Archaeological research in recent years in the cove of Lokvišće has revealed traces of a more ancient archaeological layer with remains of items from the period between the end of the 2nd century BC and mid-1st century BC.
A large number of broken amphoras indicates that wine and oil were produced in the area. In the Middle Ages, Jadranovo was known as Sveti Jakov (St. Jacob) and was a coastal property and harbour of Drivenik Castle and Municipality. At the end of the 18th century people immigrate and establish several hamlets in the surroundings of the old church of St. Jacob. The new center of the parish was developed around the renovated and expanded church of St. Jacob.
Most people from Sveti Jakov made their living from fishing, predominantly tuna fishing, but some of them were also skilled bricklayers.
In the 17th century, the tuna lookout posts around Crikvenica and in Selce were owned by administrators of the Zrinski noble family estates, but later these lookout posts were managed by various tenants. The only preserved tuna lookout post in the Crikvenica area is located in Jadranovo.
The first tourists came here in the 1930s. Since then, Jadranovo has developed into a popular tourist destination with many regular guests. Jadranovo today includes several scattered hamlets (Ivani, Kloštar, Katun, Neriz, Smokovo, Šiljevica etc.), and has managed to preserve its identity and coastal village charm despite the newly built properties and tourism development.
SELCE
The oldest traces of human habitats in the Selce area were found on the nearby hill of Sv. Juraj (St. George). The early Romanesque church on the Sv. Juraj hill-fort was originally an early Byzantine guard-house.
The advantages of a natural harbour and the beautiful landscape of the local area were also appreciated by the Romans. The amphorae that were found in the cove of Jasenova south of Selce attest to the existence of an ancient port here; there was also a larger settlement in Roman times whose name remains unknown to this day. In the 13th century, Selce, as part of the Old Croatian municipality of Bribir, came into the possession of the Frankopan noble family. Due to its position in a naturally sheltered cove, Selce gained importance as the venue for accepting and handling of goods and played an increasingly important role in trade. In 1572, Selce and almost the entire Vinodol estate was taken over by the Zrinski family. They encouraged trade by land and sea routes, which led to a more intense development of the trade harbour in Selce. Local people traditionally engaged in vine and olive growing, sheep breeding and tuna fishing. Olives were processed in three olive mills - toč. In addition to fishing, people from Selce in the 19th century also engaged in sea-faring and trade so at the end of the century, there were ca. twenty large sailing ships for the transport of wine, oil and other goods.
At the end of the 19th century in construction is one of the first public baths in Selce and the first accommodation facilities were put in order for visitors, marking the beginning of hospitality and tourism here, which over time became the town's main business.
Juraj Julije Klović
Julije Klović, or Don Giulio Clovio de Croatia (1498-1578), was a great artist of the late renaissance period and the leading exponent of the European miniature. He was born in the small village of Grižane in the Vinodol area of Crikvenica's hinterland. He spent most of his life abroad, working for popes and cardinals, kings and dukes. Upon the order of his patrons, he illuminated numerous manuscripts, missals, breviaries and prayer books. He also produced a large number of drawings and graphics. Several self-portraits are also attributed to him. In 1546, after nine years of effort, he finished his masterpiece, the Officium Virginis or Časoslav Farnese for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.
Although art history makes no record of his youth and early schooling, local tradition of his birthplace says that he was a talented boy who obtained first knowledge of painting in Crikvenica's Pauline monastery. When he was eighteen years old, he went to Venice and then to Rome, Mantua and Buda, but he retained vivid memories of his homeland of Vinodol through his entire life, and used these motives in his genial miniatures.
Klović died in Rome in 1578 and was buried in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. His grave is close to Michelangelo's statue of Moses. The inscription on his tombstone says that here lies Julije Klović from Croatia.