Things To Do in Zagreb Croatia

Upper Town and Medieval Heritage

Zagreb's Gornji Grad — the upper town — is the medieval core of a city that grew from two hilltop settlements in the 11th century. The Cathedral of the Assumption, its twin spires visible from across the lower town, anchors the eastern end. St Mark's Church, with its tiled roof displaying the coats of arms of Croatia and Zagreb in glazed ceramic, is the most photographed building in the city. The funicular connecting upper and lower town has been running since 1890 and is the shortest public funicular in the world — a practical convenience that has acquired the status of a local institution.

Café Culture and Social Life

Zagreb has one of the most active café cultures in central Europe. The Advent season market and the Saturday morning špica — the ritual of meeting friends for coffee on the Bogovićeva and Petar Preradović squares that has been a Zagreb institution for generations — give the city a social rhythm centered on public space and unhurried conversation. The pavement cafés of Tkalčićeva Street run for several hundred metres through the lower town and are occupied for most of the day and well into the evening throughout the year.

Museums and Cultural Institutions

Zagreb has a higher density of museums than most cities of its size, and the range of subjects covered reflects both the ambition of a capital city and a particular Croatian sensibility. The Museum of Broken Relationships — a collection of objects donated by people from around the world as relics of ended love affairs, accompanied by short texts — is one of the most visited small museums in Europe. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Novi Zagreb, the Croatian History Museum, and the Mimara art collection round out a museum landscape that rewards more than a day.

Food and Nightlife

Zagreb's food scene reflects its position at the junction of central European, Mediterranean, and Balkan culinary influences. The Dolac market, just above the main square, has been the city's fresh food market since 1930 and is still the best place in Zagreb to buy produce. The restaurant scene ranges from konobas serving traditional Croatian cooking to a newer generation of places using Croatian ingredients in contemporary ways. The nightlife is concentrated in the Savska and Jarunsko neighbourhoods, with a strong live music scene that extends beyond the expected tourist circuit.

Café Culture, Markets and Zagreb's Everyday Life

Zagreb operates at a pace and social intensity that sets it apart from the coastal cities that draw the majority of visitors to Croatia. The špica — the Saturday morning ritual of coffee, conversation, and visible social presence in the cafés of Tkalčićeva Street and the surrounding terraces — is one of the most deeply rooted urban social customs in Central Europe and the most reliable way to understand the city's particular relationship with public space and social life. The Dolac market above Ban Jelačić Square, open daily and at its fullest on Saturday mornings, is the central food market of the city and functions as a social institution as well as a supply point for the city's restaurants, with red umbrella stalls selling produce from farms within a two-hour radius of the city. The Museum of Broken Relationships, which opened as a temporary exhibition in Zagreb in 2006 before becoming a permanent institution and inspiring a book and travelling exhibition, holds a collection of donated objects from ended relationships accompanied by the donors' accounts and has become one of the most visited museums in Croatia. The Mirogoj cemetery, designed by Herman Bollé in 1876 and enclosed by an arcaded Renaissance wall, is one of the most architecturally distinguished cemeteries in Europe and the resting place of figures central to Croatian cultural and political history. The city's art nouveau and Viennese Secession architecture, concentrated in the Donji Grad lower town built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, provides a consistent streetscape that reflects Zagreb's status as a provincial capital within the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, donated to the city by the bishop and cultural patron Josip Juraj Strossmayer and housed in the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, holds the finest collection of pre-modern European painting in Croatia, with works spanning Italian, Dutch, Flemish, and French schools from the 14th to 19th centuries. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Novi Zagreb, opened in 2009 in a building by Igor Franić, holds the national collection of Croatian and international contemporary art from the 1950s to the present in purpose-built gallery spaces that make it the most professionally presented contemporary art venue in the country. The Lauba House for People and Art, a contemporary art space in a converted factory building in the western part of the city, programs exhibitions of Croatian and international contemporary art in a format that has established it as the most dynamic private art venue in Zagreb. The Jarun Lake recreational area in the south-west of the city, created for the 1987 World University Games, provides outdoor swimming, cycling, and rowing within the city limits.