Explore Zagreb

Ban Jelačić Square is the central square of Zagreb, just below the Upper Town and Kaptol and south of the Dolac market, where Ilica and several other streets meet. It has an equestrian statue of Ban Josip Jelačić by Anton Dominik Fernkorn, unveiled in 1866, and the Manduševac fountain, and many tram lines cross it.

Zagreb Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary and to the kings Stephen and Ladislaus, stands on Kaptol. After the 1880 earthquake Hermann Bollé rebuilt it in neo-Gothic style with two spires about 108 m high. Damaged again in 2020, it is still under restoration and partly in scaffolding, but the church is open for visits and prayer.

The Stone Gate is the only surviving gate of medieval Gradec, first built in the 13th century and given its present form in the 18th. Its vaulted passage holds a shrine with a painting of the Virgin Mary that was found undamaged after the town fire of 1731. People stop to light candles and pray, and the Mother of God of the Stone Gate is Zagreb's patron saint.

Lotrščak Tower is a 13th-century tower built to guard the southern gate of the Gradec town walls; its name refers to a bell that rang before the gates closed each night. The Grič cannon on the fourth floor is fired every day at noon, and visitors climb to a viewpoint at the top over the Lower Town. The ground floor holds a gift shop.

The Museum of Broken Relationships, in the baroque Kulmer Palace in the Upper Town, shows everyday objects donated by people around the world, each with the donor's short account of a relationship that ended. Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić founded it; the collection was first shown in 2006 and toured abroad before the museum opened here in 2010.

The Grič Tunnel runs about 350 m beneath the Upper Town, linking Mesnička Street in the west with Radićeva Street in the east, with side passages to the south. It was dug during the Second World War as an air-raid shelter, used again as a shelter in the 1990s, and renovated and opened to the public in 2016. It is a pedestrian passage that also hosts exhibitions and events.

The Croatian Museum of Naïve Art occupies the first floor of the 18th-century Raffay Palace in Zagreb's Upper Town. Founded in 1952 as the Peasant Art Gallery, it holds more than 1,900 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by self-taught artists, many of them painters of the Hlebine school such as Ivan Generalić.

St. Mark's Church is the parish church of Zagreb's Upper Town, with a Romanesque window from the 13th century and a Gothic nave from the 14th. Its roof of glazed tiles shows the coats of arms of Zagreb and of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. Badly damaged in the 2020 earthquake, it was restored and reopened in December 2023.

The Croatian National Theatre is Zagreb's house for opera, ballet and drama, in a Neo-Baroque building by the Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer that opened in 1895 on today's Republic of Croatia Square. Its yellow facade looks onto Ivan Meštrović's fountain The Well of Life, and the company stages more than 200 performances a season.

The Nikola Tesla Technical Museum on Savska cesta was founded in 1954 and opened to the public in 1963; it took Tesla's name in 2015. Its halls show historic aircraft, cars, steam engines and fire-fighting equipment, and the visit includes a model mine about 300 metres long, a planetarium and a room where Tesla's experiments are demonstrated.

Mirogoj is Zagreb's main city cemetery, opened in 1876 on land that had belonged to the linguist Ljudevit Gaj. Hermann Bollé designed its long ivy-covered arcades and domed entrance, built between 1879 and 1929. People of all faiths are buried here, the arcades hold the tombs of many Croatian public figures, and the grounds are laid out as a park.

Zagreb Zoo covers about seven hectares inside Maksimir Park, partly on islands in the park's first lake. It opened on 27 June 1925 with five animals and now keeps several hundred species; enclosures include a tropical house built in 1972, a lion enclosure opened in 2014 and a walk-through aviary for African birds.

The Museum of Contemporary Art has occupied a building by architect Igor Franić on Avenija Dubrovnik in Novi Zagreb since 2009. It grew out of the City Gallery of Contemporary Art founded in 1954; its collection of some 12,000 works by Croatian and international artists from the 1950s onwards includes Carsten Höller's slide sculpture in the entrance hall.

Maksimir Park is a landscaped public park of about 316 hectares in the east of Zagreb, founded by Bishop Maksimilijan Vrhovac in 1787 and opened to the public in 1794. Laid out in the English romantic style, it combines oak woodland, meadows and five artificial lakes with the Echo pavilion, the Swiss House and an obelisk from 1843, and contains Zagreb Zoo.