Villa Angiolina and the Museum of Tourism, Opatija

Opatija was the Habsburg empire's winter seaside, and Villa Angiolina is where that began. Built in the 1840s by a merchant from Rijeka and planted around with camellias, palms and sequoias, the villa drew aristocratic visitors, then hotels, then a whole coastal resort with a shoreline promenade that still runs for kilometres along the rocks. The house now holds the Croatian Museum of Tourism, a small and surprisingly good collection of posters, luggage labels, bathing costumes, hotel registers and postcards, tracing how people learned to go on holiday at all. The painted rooms and terrazzo floors are half the exhibit. The park around it is public and free.

What you actually see

• The villa's painted rooms - stucco, terrazzo floors and wall painting from the 1840s house.
• The tourism collection - posters, hotel ledgers, bathing costumes and early travel advertising.
• The park - camellias, palms and sequoias on terraces running down towards the sea.
• The Lungomare - the long shoreline promenade that passes below the park in both directions.

When to go

April and May, when the camellias and magnolias are out in the park, or September and October. Opatija is a year-round town with a mild winter, which is precisely why it was built, and the museum stays open through it. Afternoons are quieter than mornings, and the shore promenade is best walked at either end of the day.

Honest expectations

The museum is small and can be seen in under an hour, and English captions are thinner than the Croatian ones. It is a niche subject that will not hold anyone uninterested in social history. Opatija itself is faded rather than glamorous, with several large hotels showing their age, and the shore is concrete bathing platforms rather than sand.

Nearby

Rijeka and Trsat Castle are twenty minutes east, and the Učka ridge rises directly behind the town.