November 15, 2020 – From Saturday, November 14 until Saturday, November 21, the Rijeka Sugar Refinery Palace opening will take place for all interested visitors, lovers of Rijeka, and its history and for the citizens and guests of Rijeka. During the eight-day opening, free guided tours are organized for citizens in compliance with epidemiological measures.
After two and a half years of work on the renovation and arrangement of the building itself and the creation of an extremely attractive permanent exhibition on the history of Rijeka, this new space of the Museum of the City of Rijeka is ready to receive visitors.
The Sugar Palace has been a protected cultural asset since 1970. The city of Rijeka acquired it in the late 1990s as a result of the bankruptcy of the Rikard Benčić engine factory. Numerous experts consider this building to be one of the most beautiful Baroque palaces in the Republic of Croatia, and the interior of the building has so far been relatively unknown to many citizens because the building had the function of the administrative space of the former factory. The Croatian Restoration Institute conducted research inside the building itself and the results they obtained required a thoughtful attitude towards its future purpose.
The renovation of the Sugar Palace is an integral part of the EU project entitled “Tourist valorization of representative monuments of Rijeka’s industrial heritage” for the implementation of which the City of Rijeka was approved co-financing in the amount of 68.9 million kuna grant from the European Regional Development Fund.
Due to the epidemiological situation and respect for epidemiological measures, tours during the eight-day opening will be organized in such a way that two groups of 25 people enter the museum at the same time, one of which will first tour the first floor and the other the second floor. Guided tours last 60 minutes, after which the area will be disinfected in a 30-minute break to ensure the reception of the next two groups of visitors.
Free tickets, which are to be picked up at “Ri Infu,” will list the day and hour a particular visitor can come to tour the Palace and its permanent exhibition, all to ensure that as many people as the epidemiological measures allow staying in the space at the same time.
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