American Gardens
Opatija has a secret garden, a green oasis of peace in the middle of town with a stunning view of Kvarner Bay: the American Gardens. This magnificent park, which covers an area of 8,000 m2, is located in the immediate vicinity of the town centre and Slatina Beach but is wrapped in an invisible veil of peace and tranquillity. After decades of being closed, the American Gardens have now been reopened to the public. A monumental gate with stone pillars guards the entrance to the park with its well-manicured vegetation and which has been carefully designed for relaxation of body and mind.
The history of the American Gardens goes back almost a century. It all began with a ‘double love story’. Michael Paulus Kuczor, a rich Hungarian Szegedi paprika merchant, came in the 1920s to Opatija, which at the time was one of Europe’s most famous destinations, and fell in love with the wonderful view from the green terraces located above the town centre.
He chose this spot to make his dream come true, a dream in which an angel had appeared to him among flowers and fountains and promised him help lay out a magnificent garden.
In the vicinity, there lived Hilda von Hortenau, who was related to the Austrian imperial family, as she was an extramarital child of the Archduke Otto von Habsburg, the nephew of the Emperor Franz Joseph, and the Viennese prima ballerina Maria Schleinzer. Hilda was the angel who helped Kuczor lay out the gardens. In 1922, this noble woman married the Hungarian adventurer, whose life’s journey had taken him from his home country via Paris to America, where he started a successful spice company and earned the nickname the ‘King of Paprika’.
Determined to create the most beautiful botanical garden in this part of Europe, the couple blew up the rocks on the hill with mines, brought in soil in carriages, and laid out semi-circular terrace gardens over an area of 30,000 m2. Kuczor didn’t lose his mercantile spirit in Opatija. In fact, he charged a fee of 5 lira to enter the botanical garden, which soon became famous thanks to its beautiful view of Kvarner Bay and the carefully designed architecture of the park with its gardenias, camellias, magnolias, Australian agaves and eucalypts, but also vineyards and thousands of roses. The red peppers to which Kuczor owed his fame and fortune were of course also present in the garden.
During the fifteen years (from 1926 to 1941) in which the garden was open to the public and before its founder left Opatija, a true green oasis of peace and quiet was created in the heart of the town. The press called the park ‘The Gardens of Semiramis’, evoking one of the Seven Wonders of the World, while locally it was known as ‘the American Gardens’ in reference to Kuczor’s past, which is how it is called today.
