If you're looking for somewhere to drink, dance or party in Rijeka, you're spoilt for choice. Ever rebellious Rijeka has a nightlife scene that matches its reputation as Croatia's most alternative city, with an intoxicating array of fun bars, pubs and clubs. Hit up these late-night bars and clubs in Rijeka to quench your thirst into the early hours.
Late night spots in Rijeka
This tunnel dug into a railway embankment is heaving most nights, especially at weekends when there’s usually a band and DJs playing techno and/ or electronica. A vaulted stone ceiling, lasers and a good-looking crowd in their twenties and thirties comprise the decor. Getting to the bar, or just finding a place to stand, can be a challenge. The few tables out front fill up in warmer weather.
Near the market, Bačva is a convivial bar by day and a place of varied entertainment by night, with live music, readings and sundry random performances staged. The beer range is huge and seats outside allow you to watch the comings and goings of a busy downtown street.
This branch of a successful Malinska club of the same name is a see-and-be-seen scene full of pumping music and pretty people dressed for success. The decor is mostly white, coloured by fancy lighting. There’s lots of posing pre-midnight, but eventually the disco, hip-hop and techno soundtrack gets dancers moving and the crowd mingling. By day it’s a slick café.
Celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2018, Pommery is one of those places that may not be for everybody but can be great fun with the right people. Very central, with a prominent terrace that gets busy by day, Pommery hosts DJs and drinks promotion nights and charges that little bit extra to encourage the kind of clientele who would be out of place at urban hangouts for a younger crowd.
A slick, modern glass-enclosed structure, sitting all by itself on a pier in the main harbour, houses an upmarket bar that draws a mix of yuppies, tourists, hipsters and hard-drinking barflies. The bar’s terrace is on the sea; inside is a carefully designed, dimly lit space, with high tables and tall stools in the middle of the bar area, and lower chairs with zebra-striped cushions at the two ends. The darkness releases inhibitions, and the techno and trance music inspire a good time. DJs and dancing at weekends.
Down at the harbourfront, this place is best experienced late at night when the two-floor wooden pub with maritime knick-knacks is packed to the rafters with partying twentysomethings, the room zinging a commercial dance and rock soundtrack. It gets busy late on and difficult to get inside. Guinness, Kilkenny and Stella, wines and cheap cocktails complement the standard Ožujsko beer, but the drinks here are secondary to the social buzz.
Specialising in rakija, the local form of grappa that comes in all kinds of flavours, Rakhia is essential a lively urban nightspot which programmes live music on Tuesdays, and DJs and parties Thursdays through Saturdays. Scattered in between are rakija tastings for extensive sampling.
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