The exhibition “Views of Rijeka from the Postcard Collection of the City Museum of Rijeka” is an opportunity to get acquainted with numerous postcards depicting the largest city in the Kvarner Gulf from the end of the 19th century onwards. The postcards represent various parts of the city and, thanks to the perspective, the viewer gets a feeling of spaciousness. Very often they represent the streets that were popular in the minds of the city’s inhabitants at the time for multiple reasons. In some cases they are some important traffic corridors (squares and intersections of the busiest streets) and in some other buildings that created attractive street scenery (hotels, churches, railway stations, theatres, schools). The same can be said of the river Rječina views, of the canalized old river bed called Fiumara or Mrtvi kanal, and the parks. The fact that these urban points appeared on postcards is a signal that the citizens of Rijeka at that time were proud of them. The city views created in this way were animated by small human figures, and even by entire groups of people. The photographer’s talent is recognized in the framing and approach to perspective, in the skill of capturing the moment, in the immediacy and faithful representation of real life, including the evocation of the atmosphere of the time. The wide-angle views, which today are valuable as an urbanistic and historical-documentary testimony of the city, also got their place at the exhibition. The oldest panorama in the Museum collection is from 1892. The views from Trsat, from Kalvarija towards Školjić and Sušak, from Kozala, from Brajda towards Belveder, Sušak from Porto Baroš are often repeated on the sweeping views. Such panoramas were a frequent inspiration for making the so-called trick postcards and folding postcards.
The exhibition is authored by Marija Lazanja Dušević. It remains open in the Sugar Palace until 7th November, 2022.
