Autore: Gianpaolo Dabbeni

Fiume, located on North-Eastern side of Kvarner Bay, takes the place of the Roman Tarsatica and due to  its strategic position of natural outlet to the sea for Eastern Europe , has been always fiercely contested. Its origins are very ancient; many populations settled there, for example Illyric warriors: descended to conquer the Gallic territories they  were dominants fighters without having any interest in agriculture or other manual labours later and they were dominated by the Celts; and during the Roman Age the fierce Liburnians that with their fast biremes, “saevae liburnae” as Horatius called them, controlled the whole Adriatic Sea. After Julius Caesar’s conquest of Kvarner and the creation of the Illyric province including Illirio, Dalmatia, Liburnia, Giapidia and Istria, the Romans founded Tarsatica, probably deriving from an ancient Celtic Tarsach.It was a peaceful town within the province where lived either Romanized native or men coming from other places of the Empire; it was even a place where the Greek merchants came to trade their goods with the amber coming from the North.
In 395 after Teodosio’s death and the consequent division of the Roman Empire, Liburnia passed to the diocese of the Italian part of the Western Empire and later to Theodoric’s kingdom. The information about Tarsatica during  the most ancient period as well as the Imperial one and the Barbarian invasions time are vague; its being a municipality of the Roman Empire and not a military station anymore can be deduced thanks to the two headstones remembering the “duumviri iure dicundo” Vettidio and Vettidiano; moreover, considering that the Slavs coming from the inner areas occupied all the regions from Istria to Dalmatia, except the coastline cities and the islands defended by the Byzantine, we could suppose that in the case of Tarsatica too, the invaders stopped in the surrounding mountain, so that the city was able to keep its institutions and its characteristics of Roman municipality.
It is mentioned in the Medieval chronicles until Charlemagne times, after the ninth century its name disappears; perhaps it was destroyed by a fire set by the Franks to revenge the death of Henry of Strasburg, Duke of Friuli, or perhaps after after a rebellion to the Frank dominion: then, in the Middle Ages was built the centre of Flumen Sancti Viti, that in the XI century, probably in 1028, passed under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Pola and in the XII century it becomes feud of the counts of Duino, first vassals of Patriarchate of Aquileia, then vassals of the Dukes of Austria. The submission to the powerful House of Duino ensured from one side prosperity, from the other the hostility of the Venetian senate that in 1291 forbade Fiume to export its goods.

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