Crikvenica is a town in western Croatia, more precisely in the
Kvarner Bay. Administratively it belongs to the Primorje-Gorski
Kotar County. The settlement originated at the confluence of the
Dubračina and the sea, on the site of the Roman station Ad turres,
in the past it served as a port for smaller Vinodol settlements in
the interior, the Frankapan centers of Bribir, Grižane, Drivenik,
Tribalj and others.
Crikvenica is within easy reach of
visitors from Central Europe. It is located in the Croatian part of
the Adriatic Sea, known as the Croatian Littoral, in the part of the
Kvarner Bay, only 35 kilometers from the city of Rijeka, the center
of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County. This large traffic hub and the
largest Croatian port is also the closest exit to the sea of the
whole of Central Croatia and a large part of Central Europe.
The town of Crikvenica, as a local self-government, consists of
places (from north to south): Jadranovo, Dramalj, Crikvenica and
Selce.
It borders the City of Kraljevica, the Municipality of
Vinodol and the City of Novi Vinodolski.
Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Church of
St. Anthony
Sundial (award for the best tourist place in the
Radio Zagreb survey in 1977)
Zvonko Car Memorial Studio
Crikvenica City Museum
Near Crikvenica there is a freshwater
Kavranovo lake
Old Crikvenica is considered to be the settlement of Kotor,
located on the top of a nearby hill of the same name. The oldest
material traces of human life were left by the Illyrian population,
and the name Ad turres remained from the Romans, which the Croats
translated as Kod tor (near the towers) after settling in these
parts.
It was a large settlement with a parish church and
five smaller churches. In 1776, a strong fire destroyed the whole of
Kotor. The pastor and part of the church values found refuge in
the Pauline monastery in Crikvenica. Most of the population moved
closer to the sea, and after the fire only a few families returned
to Kotor. Today it is demolished and abandoned.
The history
of Crikvenica is connected and conditioned by the history of the
neighboring fertile valley Vinodol. From this great green cradle,
over the centuries, settlements along the coast have grown, first as
trading ports and then as fishing villages and especially towns and
tourist resorts.
The continuity of human life in this area
can be traced back more than 30 centuries. Archaeological finds of
swords, spears, jewelry and the remains of numerous prehistoric
settlements, located on the flattened tops of hills near the sea,
testify to such a long population. Their builders and inhabitants,
first the Japods, and from the 4th century BC the Liburnians, from
these heights controlled the narrow channel between the mainland and
the island of Krk, and on the other hand controlled the ancient
traffic route through Vinodol.
Naturally protected bays also
provided refuge for Roman merchant ships, and one such safe harbor
was located in the once navigable, wide mouth of the Crikvenica
river Dubračina. Only superficial archaeological assessments of the
discovered finds suggest that the port and the settlement are at
least 2000 years old.
In late Antiquity, a branch of an
important Roman road ran along the coast, departing from Aquileia in
northern Italy, across the Senia to the Roman province of Dalmatia
and inland.
The late antique geographer Peutinger (4th
century AD) recorded the settlement of Ad Turres in this area, after
which the famous tourist settlement in Crikvenica has recently been
named.
In the 8th century, these areas were inhabited by
Croats and in Vinodol they organized their own parish, which
consisted of free municipalities. They bring their spiritual and
material culture to their new homeland, the achievements of which
are evidenced by exceptional examples of personal equipment and
jewelry, found in the old Croatian necropolis of Stranče - Gorica
near Crikvenica. They were engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry
and fishing, and from the found Roman population they accepted the
skill of growing vines and translated the Latin name of the fertile
valley, Vallis vinearia, into Croatian Vinodol, the valley of wine.
In ancient times, vinodol was called not only a valley, as it is
today, but a much wider area, including areas along the coast.
In the Middle Ages, the area of today's Crikvenica belonged to
the parish of Vinodol, which was ruled for almost 450 years by the
princes of Krk known as the Frankapans. In 1225, this princely
family came into the possession of the Vinodol Parish and ruled it
until the execution of the Croatian nobles Petar Zrinski and Fran
Krsto Frankopan in Wiener Neustadt in Vienna in 1671.
Under
the auspices of the Frankapan princes, and thanks to the free
inhabitants of the Vinodol towns, the Vinodol law was created in
1288. It is the first legal document in Croatia and one of the
oldest in Europe, created at a time when most of Europe is still
widely called barbaric. The Vinodol law was applied in the area of
the Vinodol Parish, and was written in the vernacular and the
Croatian alphabet - Glagolitic.
Glagolitic is an Old Slavic
alphabet created in 863, and has been in use in Vinodol since the
11th century. This letter was written by all social strata, educated
commoners, clergy and nobility. All major historical documents were
written in Glagolitic. In 1248, the Pope officially confirmed the
use of the Glagolitic alphabet in the liturgical rite. The priests
who were engaged in copying books and important documents during the
Middle Ages contributed the most to the cultivation of the
Glagolitic alphabet. Glagolitic was used in this area until the
17th-18th centuries. century, when it is suppressed by the Latin
alphabet.
The founder of today's Crikvenica is considered to
be Prince Nikola IV. Frankapan. On August 14, 1412, he signed a
grant allowing the construction of a monastery for the monks of St.
Pavle Pustinjak at the mouth of the river Dubračina into the sea,
next to a medieval church - from which the name Crikvenica is
derived, and that day is taken as the birthday of Crikvenica. The
monastery building connected the surrounding fishing villages and
became a center of public and cultural life. The Church of the
Assumption of Mary, with which Prince Nikola Frankopan built a
Pauline monastery in 1412, was built between 1381 and 1393.
Recently, Hotel Kaštel has been decorated in this historic building.
Julije Klović, the
world's most famous small painter of all time, received his
first education in the Crikvenica monastery. He was born in 1498
in Vinodol, near Crikvenica. Legend has it that as a boy he
painted scenes of his homeland on - a nail! He spent most of his
life in Italy. He taught painting to the great El Greco, and
contemporaries called him "little Michelangello" and ranked him
at the very top of painting, alongside Michelangello, Rafael,
Leonardo and Giorgione.
In the Middle Ages, Crikvenica
was the port of the Frankopan castle Grižane. Its inhabitants
were mainly engaged in fishing, and a document from 1609
mentions tuna fishing along the Dubračina stream. For centuries,
Crikvenica fishermen fished in Kvarner, and in the middle of the
19th century, in search of new hunting grounds, they began to
emigrate to other continents. A group of fishermen who settled
in San Pedro, California, USA, and in Seattle, Washington,
gained world fame for their achievements and innovations.