Trsat Castle (Rijeka)

Trsat Castle stands on a hill about 138 metres above the sea, on the eastern side of Rijeka, Croatia’s main port, overlooking the deep gorge of the Rječina river. It is Rijeka’s oldest hilltop fortress, and from its terraces visitors can see the port, the old town and the whole of the Kvarner Bay, which makes it one of the best viewpoints on the northern Adriatic.

The hill has been occupied since antiquity. In prehistory it carried a fortified settlement of the peoples who lived along this coast, and under the Roman Empire there was a military fort on the site, called Tarsatica, which guarded the road along the coast and the approach to Italy. In the Middle Ages the hill became the seat of a medieval castle, held for centuries by the Frankopans, the powerful noble family who ruled much of the Croatian coast, and it appears in the Vinodol Law Code of 1288 as one of their possessions. The Frankopan castle later passed to the Habsburgs, and over time it fell into decay, until, in the early nineteenth century, it was bought by Laval Nugent, an Irish-born Austrian field marshal who restored it in a romantic style, turning it into a stage-set castle with a Doric temple that served as a family mausoleum.

Visitors will find that the castle today is a pleasant combination of old stonework and nineteenth-century romance, with the remains of the old castle town known as the Gradina. A gate leads into a courtyard with arcades, a small gallery that holds exhibitions, a café with a terrace overlooking the city and the sea, and an open-air stage used for summer concerts. The walls and towers are open to walk along, and the views are the main attraction. In the morning light, the harbour with its ships and cranes is laid out below, and at dusk, the lights of Rijeka and the islands shimmer in the haze. A sense of height and distance is part of the experience.

Trsat is also a major Christian place of pilgrimage. The Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Trsat, also called Our Lady of Trsat, the oldest Marian shrine in Croatia, stands beside the castle, and according to a legend, the Holy House of the Virgin from Nazareth was carried by angels to Trsat in the late thirteenth century before moving on to Loreto in Italy. Pilgrims have climbed to the shrine for centuries, and a Franciscan monastery cares for it. Pope John Paul II visited in 2003, and a statue of him stands in the district. The modern campus of the University of Rijeka covers part of the hill’s western side.

The most atmospheric way to reach the castle is to climb the stairway of Petar Kružić from the old town, a walk of about half an hour, though a road and a bus also lead up. The site can be visited as a public attraction, and there is no charge to walk in the grounds, though opening times for the café and gallery vary.

It suits history lovers, pilgrims and photographers.