Zagreb has around 770,000 people; Croatia has about 3.8 million, and the number has been falling for years — emigration after EU accession in 2013 took a very large number of working-age people to Ireland, Germany and Austria, and it is a subject people here raise unprompted.
The layout
Three levels, north to south.
Gornji Grad — the Upper Town, the two medieval hills of Gradec and Kaptol. Cobbles, gas lamps, museums, the parliament and the cathedral. About 500 metres across.
Donji Grad — the Lower Town, the nineteenth-century grid built after the 1880 earthquake, with the Green Horseshoe of squares running through it. This is where you will spend most of your time.
Novi Zagreb — everything south of the Sava, built from the late 1950s, home to around 120,000 people and almost no visitors.
Medvednica, the mountain, closes the northern horizon at 1,035 metres.
Ban Jelačić Square is the centre of everything and every tram passes it.
The language
Croatian, written in the Latin alphabet. Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are mutually intelligible with it, and whether they are one language or four is a political question rather than a linguistic one; do not raise it casually.
English is widely spoken, particularly by anyone under about fifty, and universally in tourism.
The letters worth knowing:
- c = “ts”
- č and ć = “ch”, the first harder
- š = “sh”
- ž = the “s” in pleasure
- đ and dž = “j” as in jam
- j = “y”
So Jelačić is yel-ah-chich, Tkalčićeva is tkal-chi-che-va, and Dolac is do-lats.
Dobar dan — good day. Hvala — thank you. Molim — please, and also “you’re welcome”, and also “pardon?”. Živjeli — cheers.
The manner
Reserved on first meeting and warm quickly afterwards. Zagreb has a reputation within Croatia for being formal and a little pleased with itself, which people from Split and Rijeka will tell you at length.
Coffee is the social unit. An invitation na kavu — for a coffee — is an invitation to sit for two hours, and treating it as a fifteen-minute errand is the one reliable way to seem rude.
Punctuality is expected for anything arranged. Smoking is common and permitted on terraces.
Money and the state
Euro since 1 January 2023. Schengen the same day. Croatia has been in the EU since 2013 and NATO since 2009.
Cards work everywhere; cash is still handy at markets.
The weather in one line
Continental — cold winters with fog, hot summers, and excellent spring and autumn. Details in when to go.
Where to start
Two days in Zagreb for a route, getting around for the trams, and what you should know for the practical rules.