Kozala Cemetery was one of the first communal cemeteries in Europe. The terrain used for its construction was purchased in 1771 and it has been enlarged several times. The cemetery was officially opened back in 1838. In 1872 the city employed a custodian there, and he began to write the names of those buried in the Book of Burials. Kozala is an open book of the city’s past. Many famous Rijeka citizens are buried here: Adamić, Ciotta, Salcher, Ossoinack, Whitehead, Hajnal, Gorup, Meynier, Venucci, Kersnik, and Grossich. Kozala is also an art gallery in the open, thanks to the mausoleums of the Whitehead, Scarpa, Gorup, Leard, Manasteriotti and other families.
In 1934, the Saint Romuald and All Saints Church was built close to the cemetery, the so called Votive temple, whose white vertical lines follow the green cypresses. The architect, Bruno Angheben, designed the avant-garde building in the spirit of his own time. However, it goes beyond all ideological limitations of that period’s and latter political avant-garde constructions.
