What you are looking at when you see scaffolding, and why so much of central Zagreb is still propped up.
If you arrive in Zagreb expecting a polished central European capital and find scaffolding, netting and timber props across half the old town, this is why.
22 March 2020
At 6:24 in the morning, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck with its epicentre about seven kilometres north of the city centre. It was the strongest in Zagreb since 1880.
One person, a fifteen-year-old girl, died of her injuries. Twenty-seven were hurt.
Around 26,000 buildings were damaged. Over a thousand were rendered uninhabitable. The damage was concentrated in exactly the part of the city visitors come for — Gornji Grad, Kaptol and the nineteenth-century lower town, where the buildings are unreinforced brick and stone with heavy masonry chimneys.
The top of the cathedral’s south spire broke off and fell.
It happened in the first week of the national coronavirus lockdown. People who had been told not to leave their homes ran into the street; people who had been told not to gather stood in crowds in squares. The maternity hospital was evacuated, and photographs of nurses carrying newborns down the street in the cold became the images of that morning.
29 December 2020
Nine months later a magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit Petrinja, about fifty kilometres south-east. Seven people died and the town was largely destroyed.
Zagreb was shaken hard again, and buildings already weakened in March were weakened further. Many people in the capital spent that winter afraid to sleep indoors.
What you will see
Scaffolding and shoring, particularly on Kaptol, around St Mark’s Square, and along the streets of the Upper Town.
Missing chimneys. Zagreb’s roofs had thousands of tall brick chimneys, and a very large number came down or were taken down as a hazard. The skyline is measurably different.
Closed institutions. The Mimara, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Archaeological Museum and others have had long closures. Several remain partially shut.
Netting and hoardings over facades, some of which have been there for years.
Why it is taking so long
Because reconstruction of protected historic buildings is slow everywhere, and because Croatia’s programme has been criticised at home for being slower than that.
Funding came from the EU Solidarity Fund and the state, the legal framework had to be written from scratch, ownership of many buildings is fragmented among dozens of flat-owners, and progress in the first years was very poor. This is a live political grievance in Zagreb and people will tell you about it if you ask.
Why it is worth knowing
Because it changes how the city reads. The scaffolding is not neglect and it is not a building boom. It is a capital still repairing itself from a morning that most residents can describe minute by minute, six years on.
The history article puts it alongside the earthquake of 1880, which produced the Zagreb you are otherwise looking at.
