Villa Angiolina
Villa Angiolina is a building that marked the beginning of Opatija's tourism.
It is a villa in landscape, of the palladium type with the historicist architectural design of the Neo-Renaissance vocabulary. It is surrounded by a park, ie a famous arboretum which is a significant example of horticultural park heritage. The building is symmetrical with a monumental staircase, on the sea side in front of which is the central part of the park with a flower rotunda. The interior of the ground floor is richly decorated with stucco (friezes, garlands), neo-Corinthian pillars, painted with zoomorphic and vegetable illusionist paintings, decorated with curtains and mirrors.
Until the construction of Villa Angiolina in 1844 (actually, the reconstruction of an older building owned by Baron Haller von Hallerstein), Opatija was a relatively large settlement of about 120 houses, grouped mostly around plots off the coast and oriented mainly to fishing and seafaring. With the arrival of the Rijeka patrician Igini Scarpa, his erection of the Angiolina summer house (named after the then deceased Scarpa's Sartori family), Opatija opened its doors to a number of guests and travelers, including the Austrian Empress Maria Anna, botanist Heinrich Noë and Croatian Ban Josip Jelačić and others who, delighted with the local vegetation and climate, spread the fame of Opatija and thus prepare the ground for the future climatic health resort.
After Scarpa and his son Paolo, who already in 1869 dealt with the idea of founding a sanatorium, the villa is owned by the Moravian nobleman Chorinsky, the Southern Railway Society (for whose era the heir to the throne Rudolf and Stefanija and their guest, the Styrian satirist Rosegger). International Sleeping Car Society, Spa Commission and others. The fact that Iginio Scarpa bought the whole plot for 700 forints speaks for itself, and in 1910 the villa with a park full of exotic plants was sold for 2.5 million kroner. In Scarpa's time, the confluence of Rijeka's cream and summer parties on the terraces, at the end of the Austrian era the seat of the Spa Commission with a music pavilion and a live promenade in front of the south facade, the villa is today the seat of the Croatian Tourism Museum.
Empress Maria Anna, the wife of the former Emperor Ferdinand I, spent almost three months in the villa "Angiolini", which drew the attention of the Viennese aristocracy to Opatija.
Romanian King Carol I and Greek ruler Georg met at Villa Angiolini.