Thanks to the tireless sea and maritime enthusiasts, Rijeka offers to its citizens and visitors an interesting retro event: “Fiumare” – Kvarner festival of the sea and maritime tradition. At the time of the event, Rijeka “goes back 100 years” when the area around Dead Canal was a place of intense daily commercial traffic.

Quaternarius is the Latin name for a place where four extremes meet: mountains from the North, islands from the South, craggy shore from the East, and a big peninsula from the West, with the collision of south and north winds, and eastern and western influences of commerce, customs, and civilisation. This is Kvarner, and the centre of Kvarner is Rijeka. Ever since the old Liburns who connected sea area from Raša Bay to the mouth of the Krka River and traded their goods with Histrians and Dalmates, through the Roman Tarsa, people sailed in and out of the Rječina Delta, just like today. The most prosperous period of Rijeka was the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On the wave of a strong industrial enthusiasm, port capacities are expanded, and Rijeka is connected with the continent by rail and the Caroline and Louisiana roads and becomes the largest and most important port of the Croatian Adriatic. This is also a time frame which is revived in the days of Kvarner festival of sea and maritime tradition “Fiumare”.

By connecting the maritime and commercial tradition of the past with contemporary everyday life, “Fiumare” becomes a certain time machine on the authentic locations of Delta – Dead Canal and Verdi Street – connections to both market and port. Traditional wooden sailboats anchored in Dead Canal, traders and craftsmen from all parts of Kvarner in traditional costumes, interactive workshops of maritime and fishing skills, ship modelling workshops and the promotion of old customs, photographs, paintings… Traditional songs and dances, gastronomic offer of authentic dishes and wines, organised sightseeing of theatres and historical locations of the city centre, traditional sailboat regattas… that’s a collage of the revived images of the Dead Canal through the centuries.