Croatia · Primorje-Gorski Kotar County · Rijeka
Drenova, Rijeka — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Drenova is a neighbourhood of Rijeka on a plateau above the city, holding its largest park and cemetery grounds.
About Drenova
Where to stay in Drenova
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Drenova is a place to live. Rooms on the plateau are scarce, because this is a residential local board of Rijeka rather than a visitor quarter, and anyone staying here has usually chosen the height and the parkland over convenience. The city lies below.
Rijeka itself carries the beds, so the sensible pattern is to sleep down in the city and come up to Drenova for the park and the open ground rather than the other way round.
About Drenova
What are the main landmarks in Drenova?
The park is the landmark. Drenova holds the largest park area and the largest cemetery in Rijeka, and between them they account for much of the open ground on the plateau, which is what the local board means by calling the neighbourhood the green lung of the city. The plateau itself counts.
Height gives Drenova the rest of its interest, since a shelf of ground above Rijeka offers an outlook over the city that no landmark built up there could match.
What is the history of Drenova?
Drenova was two places. Gornja Drenova and Donja Drenova, the upper and lower halves, were historically distinct settlements on the plateau, and the pairing survives in the names long after the two were joined into a single neighbourhood of Rijeka. The present arrangement dates from 1997.
Since then Drenova has been administered as one unit of Rijeka rather than as an upper and a lower village, though the old division is still the easiest way to read the ground up there.
Where is Drenova?
Drenova occupies a plateau above Rijeka in Croatia, high enough to read as a separate shelf of ground rather than as part of the city below.
More areas in Rijeka
Updated September 2026