The tallest building in Croatia, rebuilt after one earthquake and taken apart again after another.
The cathedral is the thing you see first from anywhere in Zagreb, and it has spent most of the last century and a half being rebuilt.
A cathedral has stood on Kaptol since 1094, when King Ladislaus founded the bishopric. The Mongols destroyed it in 1242. It was rebuilt, fortified against the Ottomans with walls and towers in the sixteenth century — parts of which survive around the precinct — and given a baroque bell tower.
The 1880 earthquake
On 9 November 1880 an earthquake of around magnitude 6.3 hit Zagreb. The cathedral was badly damaged.
Hermann Bollé, the German-born architect who did more to shape modern Zagreb than anyone, rebuilt it in neo-Gothic and gave it the two spires — 105 metres, the tallest structure in Croatia.
This is worth understanding, because it explains what you are looking at: the cathedral is medieval in plan, sixteenth-century in its defences, and almost entirely late-nineteenth-century in what you see from the square.
The 2020 earthquake
On 22 March 2020, during the first week of the country’s coronavirus lockdown, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck Zagreb.
The top of the south spire snapped off and fell. The cathedral was closed. Both spires were subsequently taken down for reconstruction, and the building has been wrapped in scaffolding since.
The timing was extraordinarily cruel — a city ordered to stay indoors, then sent into the street by an earthquake, in the same week. Zagreb talks about that fortnight in a particular tone.
Restoration is funded, under way, and is expected to take many years.
What is inside
Access has been intermittent and the interior has been partially or fully closed at various points. When it is open:
The tomb of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, by Ivan Meštrović — Croatia’s most significant sculptor. Stepinac is a genuinely contested figure: archbishop under the wartime Ustaša state, imprisoned by the communists afterwards, beatified in 1998, and still argued about in Croatia. The tomb is a place of pilgrimage and the argument is not settled.
A Glagolitic inscription from around 1300 on the north wall — the old Slavic script, and one of the older examples in Croatia.
Baroque marble altars and a triptych by Albrecht Dürer’s circle.
Outside
The Kaptol precinct around it — the bishops’ town, one of Zagreb’s two founding settlements. The other, Gradec, is on the next hill and they spent centuries at war with each other.
The gold Madonna column by Bollé stands in front, with four angels. It was itself damaged in 2020 and has been restored.
Dolac market is directly below, up a flight of steps from the square, and the contrast between the two is the best two minutes in Zagreb.
More Landmarks
St Mark's Church
The tiled roof everyone photographs, on a square you can stand in but not linger on.
Ban Jelačić Square
The main square, the meeting point under the clock, and a statue that has been turned around twice for political reasons.
The Funicular and Lotrščak Tower
Sixty-six seconds on one of the shortest funiculars in the world, and a cannon fired at noon every day since 1877.