RIJEKA – EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE – LAST MOMENTS OF EXTRA TIME

With the 2020 European Capitals of Culture granted “extra time” until the end of April, Rijeka has announced more than 50 events for the final month of festivities.

The programmes were announced at a press conference on 25 March. More than 400 cultural and art events were held in Rijeka in 2020, mostly during the summer, though a portion of the programme activities took place in the autumn and early 2021, with the majority of those events planned for April 2021. 

The eventful programme that was announced at the recent press conference includes plays, themed walking tours of the city, permanent installation opening ceremonies, exhibitions, concerts and similar events, all of which are planned in accordance with the coronavirus prevention measures implemented by the Civil Protection Headquarters. As was emphasised at the press conference, the scheduled events will adapt to the measures, should they change or become more stringent.

A dozen exhibitions are scheduled to open in April, some of which will remain open to the public after 30 April. One such exhibition is Klimt Unknown – Love, Death, Ecstasy, which showcases his works – paintings that were taken from the ceiling of the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc after 133 years so that they could be restored and exclusively exhibited at the newly renovated 18th-century palace to which the City Museum of Rijeka has recently been relocated. Klimt will be exhibited there until mid-October 2021.

The grand-scale exhibition Fiume Fantastic – City Phenomena, which was a huge success in the latter half of 2020 with over 7000 visitors, will reopen at Export at the Delta. This exhibition is enhanced with children’s instructions for exploration and will reintroduce expert-guided tours.

The exhibition Fashion and Comic Books, transplanted from the Angoulême Comic Book Museum, will display over a hundred exhibits for visitors at the City Museum building at 1 Riccardo Zanella Square. They include sketches, clothes, fashion accessories, perfumes and various publications that highlight the direct bond between fashion and comic books, since fashion has often been influenced by comic book protagonists. The exhibition will remain open until mid-June.

Mayor of Rijeka Vojko Obersnel pointed out at the press conference “that the ongoing pandemic prevention measures prevent us from planning and holding the closing ceremony in a similar vein to the opening ceremony just over a year ago when we entered the year of Rijeka as the European Capital of Culture with a smile on our face and filled with pride without knowing what lay ahead in 2020.” 

“However,” he added, “we can still take pride in knowing that over the past year, we have done much more than was thought possible in March of 2020. Despite the coronavirus, Rijeka has successfully held the title of European Capital of Culture, which still remains because it has been placed on the map of European Capitals of Culture. We bid farewell to the year of Rijeka as the European Capital of Culture with dignity and look forward to the future, when the entire experience of implementing this project, and not just its tangible legacy, will provide a solid foundation for the further development of culture in Rijeka.”

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