Thanks to a group of tireless enthusiasts – people who love the sea and maritime tradition have been working hard on organising the Fiumare festival – The Kvarner Festival of the sea and naval tradition. It’s an exciting event for both local people and visitors to Rijeka, taking place for the eighth time, with the final goal of reviving the hundred-year-old maritime tradition of the city. During the festival, Rijeka is taken back one hundred years, when the area around the Dead Channel was the location of the intensive merchant traffic every day.
It’s a unique festival of the sea and maritime tradition, and numerous events are held offering visitors a look into Rijeka’s merchant past, still connected with today’s everyday life. Thirty partners participated in the creation of the program, ten associations are guests in the organisation of the festival, and it will take place in 25 locations throughout the city.
Traditional wooden sailboats are moored in the Dead Channel, merchants and crafts-people are wearing traditional outfits from all parts of Kvarner, and there are interactive workshops of various maritime and fishing skills. There will be ship modeling workshops as well as promotions of old traditions, photos and pictures, traditional songs and dances, and traditional and indigenous food and drinks. Organised tours of the theatre and historic locations in the centre of the town, regattas by traditional sailboats – all of this will be a part of the collage of the Dead Channel through the centuries.
The festival started on Tuesday, May 28th, with the presentation of a traditional boat which was rebuilt using the funds given for that purpose by a European project, and a parade by the participants of the festival. On Friday and Saturday, the people of Rijeka are invited to participate in the programs which will be organised on the Pier of Karolina Riječka, mostly for children and young people, including lectures, education, musical events, and exhibitions.
Rijeka’s Mayor Vojko Obersnel stresses that the primary value of the Fiumare festival is the fact that it brings to the attention the true roots of the area related to maritime tradition which helped form Rijeka into an open, cosmopolitan town which attracts many new people, boats, and ideas, which it is today.
