Zagreb

Zagreb (ancient Zagrabia), capital of Croatia, in the northern part of the country, on the Sava River. One of the largest cities of Croatia and an industrial center, Zagreb has plants producing chemicals, machinery, leather goods, paper, metals, and textiles. Zagreb is also the heart of modern Croatian cultural life. The city has a university (the University of Zagreb; 1669); an opera house; music, art, and film academies; museums; art galleries; and the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (formerly the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts). Noteworthy landmarks include an 18th-century palace and remnants of an 11th-century cathedral.

Slavic tribes settled the area in the 6th century. They established a settlement eventually known as Gradec, or “fortress,” for the fortifications they built to protect the settlement. A second settlement, known as Kaptol, developed as a religious town when a Roman Catholic bishop was stationed there in 1093. Fortifications were added to this settlement in the 16th century. During the next 300 years Gradec and Kaptol expanded and converged into the resulting sprawl that constitutes modern Zagreb. Gradec was named the capital of the kingdom of Croatia when that monarchy came into existence in the 10th century. Croatia, and with it Gradec and Kaptol, came under Hungarian control in the late 11th century. Gradec became a Hungarian free royal city in 1242, making it a feudal holding directly responsible to the king and giving its citizens the right to manage their own affairs. In 1850 Gradec and Kaptol were administratively combined into Zagreb (German Agram). That name had been applied informally to the two towns since the 17th century. The city was made the capital of the Hungarian domain of Croatia and Slavonia in 1867. In 1918, along with Croatia and Slavonia, it became part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929).

During World War II Zagreb was the capital of the Axis puppet state of Croatia from 1941 to 1945. It was the capital of the Yugoslav republic of Croatia from the republic’s founding in 1945 until the republic became an independent nation in 1992. Since then it has been the capital of independent Croatia.

Despite long periods of foreign rule, the historic architecture of Zagreb remains essentially intact. The legacy includes the Gothic Saint Mark’s cathedral with its painted tile roof, the 15th-century Cathedral of Saint Stephen with its gracefully rising spires, and the Strossmayer gallery, which boasts numerous paintings by the Old Masters. Two broad greenbelts, checkered with museums, galleries, and expansive plazas, stretch from the city center northward toward the ancient sites of Gradec and Kaptol. Population 682,598 (2001).