As an education centre, the Prva Sušačka Hrvatska Gimnazija began its life as the Royal Superior Rijeka Gymnasium (“Kraljevska velika gimnazija riječka”). The school was moved in April 1896 from the Hungarian ruled Fiume (“Corpus Separatum of the Hungarian Crown”) to a new building in the Croatian administered town of Sušak (in the Croatian-Slavonian Kingdom, also part of the Habsburg realms) and acquired the name “Kraljevska velika gimnazija u Sušaku”. The Head of the Department of Worship and Teaching in Croatia, Izidor Kršnjavi, was the first to propose the relocationof school of the school to Sušak, which was favored and sponsored by Sušak Municipality, with a personal contribution of the Mayor Hinko Bačić, who was pushing forward the urban modernization of this area. The relocationof school was also welcome by the Autonomist Italian oriented Fiuman élite as well as by the Hungarian authorities. Iit has been locally perceived and remembered as a crucial step towards the division of the city and the segregation of the Croatian society from Fiume. The Leipzig architects Robert Ludwig and Theodor Hülssner, who had already built many schools, including the palace of the new Gymnasium in Zagreb (now hosting the Museum Mimara), designed the new building, placed on the side of Sušak’s Bulevar, little less than 1km from the previous location on the Fiumara, but significantly bigger and more sumptuous. From the original 354 pupils, at the turn of the century there were 384 pupils, of which 130 from Kvarner islands and Istria. In 1927 the Gymnasium celebrated 300 years from the beginning of schooling in Rijeka, claiming continuity with the gymnasium opened by the Jesuits, with the renowned poet and teacher Vladimir Nazor as its headmaster (later in Federal Yugoslavia, he became the first President of the Presidium of the Parliament of the People’s Republic of Croatia). During the Italian occupation of Sušak in 1941-1943, the Croatian language was forbidden, but the Gymnasium resumed its normal activities after Italian capitulation and in the new Socialist Yugoslavia as “Druga Gimnazija u Rijeci”, but continued to be known informally as “Sušačka Gimnazija”, and in independent Croatia as “Prva Sušačka Hrvatska Gimnazija”.