Rijeka City Tower

The long history of Rijeka is written on the face of the City Tower, a building that has become a real architectural and artistic symbol of the city.

The tower is an imposing building divided by a cordon cornice into three zones: ground floor with the entrance around which there is a stone cut portal frame (beyond it, one can see the Habsburg Eagle), first floor with the mounted reliefs and busts of Emperor Leopold I and Charles VI, and second floor with window openings.

The relief portraits were created at a time when Charles VI came to the throne and when the Emperor Leopold I issued Rijeka with a diploma which awards it with its own coat of arms, a double-headed eagle with two heads turned to the same side. Beneath the coat of arms, there is a motto -INDEFICIENTER, which means inexhaustible. Rijeka citizens have placed the bust of Emperor Leopold I and the Emperor Charles VI on the City Tower, in gratitude of Habsburg emperors who helped Rijeka in becoming declared a free port.

Over a long period of existence, the City Tower was repeatedly architecturally renovated and restored (1639; after an earthquake in 1750; in 1800; 1890, and recently, in 1986 when the restoration work on reliefs of the emperors was assigned toSculptorAcad. Z. Kamenar).

A worthy and noble intention was noticed during the last planning of the Tower earlier this year (2013), when a new and modern lighting was conducted; a lighting that properly emphasizes the basic architectural forms of this historic building. However, the new lighting solution has probably made ​​an inadvertent mistake, when the stone busts of the emperors and the old city coat of arms, on the first floor of the tower, remained un-illuminated.

Therefore, this urban action proposes a simple correction of lighting with new light design solutions.

The described stone fragments of the Tower testify to the rich history of Rijeka and must be properly illuminated and displayed on the front of the building.