Rijeka: the city that invented the torpedo

On the Korzo, the main pedestrian street, shops and cafés occupy Austro-Hungarian buildings constructed when the city was the empire's primary maritime outlet.

A few steps away, the Cathedral of Saint Vitus, with its rare circular Baroque floor plan, houses a crucifix to which local tradition attributes a 16th-century miracle.

Climbing the five hundred and sixty-one steps of the Trsat Staircase, built in 1531, one reaches the castle of the same name and the sanctuary which legend claims briefly hosted the Holy House of Nazareth before it reached Loreto.

Returning towards the port, the industrial complex of Rikard Benčić, a former torpedo factory converted for new purposes, recalls Rijeka's role as a pioneer of this naval technology.

The modern torpedo, invented in Rijeka in 1866 by Giovanni Luppis and Robert Whitehead, forever changed world naval warfare: few visitors today associate this invention with a medium-sized city on the Adriatic.

The sanctuary of Trsat remains a pilgrimage destination even today, regardless of how historically founded one considers the legend of the Holy House passing through here before Loreto.