From the July issue of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

Victoria, Julija, Viola, Angiolina…

All the way along the pretty promenade in Opatija, the showy, turreted villas are engraved with the names of well-heeled women who came here more than a century ago in search of seaside pleasures.

As I strolled past ornamental gardens, created with shrubs grown from seeds collected by homecoming sailors, I wondered about these long-ago characters who helped create a winter playground in a previously obscure corner of the Adriatic.

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Some would have been the expensively upholstered wives of Austro-Hungarian grandees, transported to their seasonal bolthole by the new railway that first connected Vienna and Budapest with the sea in 1882 – and would deliver the Austrian and Prussian emperors for a historic meeting 12 years later.

But others, less respectable, came here too: secret mistresses, writers’ muses, thrill-seeking actresses and dancers. A long time has passed, but this wonderfully evocative place still has the heady scent of scandal about it.

There’s no Villa Isadora in Opatija, but there should be. On her licentious travels across Europe, the controversial American dancer Isadora Duncan shipped up here in the early 20th century, looking for sexual adventure in what had become known as the ‘Nice of the East’.

By all accounts, Opatija had plenty on offer, but when World War I finally did for the Austro-Hungarian empire, the resort slipped into genteel obscurity for a couple of generations. If I hadn’t had several days in hand to meander around northern Croatia, I would never have found it.

Opatija lies midway along a crescent of the northern Adriatic coast known as the Gulf of Kvarner, in one of those curious corners of Europe where history has complicated the map: it’s Croatia, but the Slovenian and Italian borders are mere minutes away. As far as nearly every foreign visitor is concerned, the destinations of choice in this part of the world are the lovely Istrian peninsula, immediately to the west, and the Gulf of Venice beyond that.

Scenically, the Kvarner region suffers little in comparison with either, but perhaps there’s an image problem with its name: hard to pronounce and easy to forget. The regional capital, Rijeka, is no thing of beauty either, although if you look beyond the clanking industrial zone you’ll find a picturesque castle and an attractive walled seafront known by its Italian name, the Riva.

The fact that the Italian lingo lingers here is a reminder that Italy knew a good thing when it saw it, and (with a little help from the Germans) the Italians governed the region for two decades until the end of World War II, leaving their culinary and architectural fingerprints all over the place. I resolved to uncover some more of Kvarner’s secrets. Why did the turn-of-the-century glitterati find it so beguiling?

Opatija was the obvious starting point for an intended one-night stand that turned into a week-long affair. The first thing you notice is climate change: local, not global. Even in early spring, the morning sun prickles the bare skin and the Adriatic sparkles a magic blue. ‘It’s because of the mountain,’ said Goran, the immaculately uniformed barman at the Hotel Kvarner: ‘It keeps the bad weather away.’

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