Opatija is included in the territory of the Liburni, a pre-Roman Illyrian people. In Roman times, the area was home to several patrician villas connected to the nearby town of Castrum Laureana, the modern Lovran.
In the Middle Ages the current town's territory was divided between Veprinac (now a locality of Opatija, perhaps home to a small fishing port) and Kastav, where the fisherman village of Veprinac. The Benedictine Abbey of St. James is mentioned for the first time in 1453, and around it a small hamlet developed with the centuries.
The town's modern history begins in 1844, when Iginio Scarpa, a rich merchant from Rijeka, founded Villa Angiolina. It became a fashionable destination for the Austrian imperial family and Austrian nobility and soon more luxury hotels and villas were built, such as the Hotel Kvarner (1884), the Restaurant Kamelija and the Police station by the Keglevi? family. A new railway line, managed by the Austrian Southern Railway, was extended to Rijeka, from where it was possible to go by tram to Opatija. The Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I used to spend several months here during the winter. Many of these late 19th-century luxury hotels and villas have survived to present times.
In 1920 Opatija was assigned to Italy. Two years later, with the advent of Fascism, the Italian government started a program of forced italianization of the population, and most of the public positions were assigned to Italian-speaking citizens. In 1947 Opatija was given to Yugoslavia; most of the Italian-speaking population, whose percentage had substantially increased in the past years, emigrated to Italy.
After the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, the town became part of Croatia.
The above mentioned restaurant Kamelija and the police station, which were expropriated in 1920, were partially refunded to the House of Dra�kovi? in 2012
