Over the past few years Croatia has re-emerged as one of the favourite tourist destinations worldwide. With it's dramatic coastline, preserved medieval towns, long hot summers and fine hotels, it's not hard to see why. And as Croatia is an official candidate nation for the EU, the country looks set to be a leading tourist destination for years to come.

Population: 4.495.904

Largest Cities (over 100,000 inhabitants):

Zagreb - 788.841, Split - 258.913, Rijeka - 144.043, Osijek - 114.616

Total area: 56,542 sq km
land: 50,707 sq km
coastline: 5,835 sq km

Zagreb

First mentioned in the 11th century, Zagreb has grown from two rival towns, Kapitol and Gradec, to form the captial city of Croatia. Zagreb is a substantial tourist center, not only in terms of transit from West and Central Europe to the Adriatic Sea but also as a tourist destination. Since the end of the war it has attracted a fair number of tourists, but many tourists that visit Croatia skip Zagreb in favor of the beaches along the Adriatic coast and the even older historic cities such as Dubrovnik, Šibenik, Zadar and others.

Nevertheless, Zagreb celebrated its 900th birthday in 1994 and it is not only rich in cultural and historical monuments, museums and galleries, but it also has a variety of modern shops, and offers good quality of diversified restaurants as well as sports and recreation facilities. It is a big center of congress tourism, economic and business events and trade fairs not only in Croatia but also in this part of Europe. Being an important junction point, it has road, air, railway and bus connections with European metropolises and all bigger cities and tourist resorts in Croatia.

The historical part of the town, the Upper Town and Kaptol, are a unique urban core even in European terms, and thus represent the target of sightseeing tours. The old town's streets and squares can be reached on foot, starting from Ban Josip Jelačić Square, the central part and the heart of Zagreb, or by a funicular on nearby Tomićeva Street. The old core of the town includes many famous buildings, churches, museums and institutions as well as pleasant restaurants and coffee bars. Zagreb is also the host of Zagrebfest, the oldest Croatian pop-music festival, as well as of several traditional international sports events and tournaments. The Day of the City of Zagreb (16th of November) is celebrated every year with special festivities, esp. on the Jarun lake near the southwestern part of the city. Entertainment can be found in many discotheques, night clubs, casinos, etc.

Numerous shops, boutiques, store houses and shopping centers offer a variety of good quality clothes. World famous Zagreb souvenirs include: the ball-point pen, invented by Slavoljub Penkala from Zagreb over 80 years ago, or the tie, an accessory named in several European languages (cravat in French) after Croatian horsemen who fought on the European fronts from the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century up to the French Revolution, wearing characteristic scarves around their necks. The offer of Zagreb includes good-quality crystal, china and ceramics, nice wicker or straw baskets, top-quality Croatian wines and gastronomic products. Many Zagreb restaurants offer various specialities of national and international cuisine. Domestic products which deserve to be tasted include the turkey, duck or goose with mlinci (a kind of pasta), štrukli (cottage-cheese strudel), cottage cheese with cream, traditional nut-cake. As Zagreb is relatively close to the sea, restaurants offer fresh seafood. There are many fast-food restaurants and stands in Zagreb, so those who prefer this type of food will not be disappointed.

Tennis Center Maksimir, in the part of the city called Ravnice to the east of the center, consists of two sports blocks. The first comprises a tennis center situated in a large tennis hall with four courts. There are 22 outdoor tennis courts with lights. The other block offers multipurpose sports facilities: apart from tennis courts, there are handball, basketball, indoor football grounds, as well as track and field facilities, a bocci ball alley and table tennis opportunities. The most popular football clubs from the city are NK Dinamo (with the home stadium in Maksimir) and HNK Zagreb (with the home stadium in Kranjčevićeva street).

Zagreb is the site of the University of Zagreb founded in 1669. The faculty buildings as well as dorms are scattered all around the city. Zagreb also hosts several faculties, parts of various politechnic schools, as well as dozens of gymnasiums and other high schools.

Zagreb is also home to the eponymous film-producing company, Zagreb Film.

Croatian culture

The culture of Croatia has roots in a long history: the Croats have been inhabiting the area for thirteen centuries, but there are important remnants of the earlier periods still preserved in the country. These include records of inhabitation of the island of Vis by ancient Greeks (the queen Teuta of Issa); many buildings and ruins from the ancient Roman period, including many Roman cities throughout the Dalmatian coast, notably the aqueduct of Salona, emperor Diocletian's Palace in Split, Euphrasius' Basilica in Poreč.

The early middle ages brought the great migration of the Slavs and this period was perhaps a Dark Age in the cultural sense until the successful formation of the Slavic states which coexisted with Italic cities that remained on the coast, each of them were modelled like Venice. By joining the Hungarian state in the eleventh century, Croatia lost its independence, but it didn't lose its ties with the south and the west, and instead this ensured the beginning of a new era of Central European cultural influence. Similarly, the beginning of the wars with the Ottoman Empire caused many problems but in the long term it both reinforced the northern influence (by having the Austrians as the rulers) and also introduced a distinct oriental cultural influence.

The turbulent twentieth century re-oriented Croatia politically on many occasions and affected it in many other ways, but it couldn't significantly alter its already peculiar position at the crossroads of many different cultures.

Pop music and rock is more popular in Croatia than folk music, albeit the folk/pop combinations fare the best. The pop music of Croatia generally resembles the canzone music of Italy, while including elements of the native traditional music. Performers such as Severina, Gibonni, Thompson, Lvky and many others have captured the attention of the pop audience. Each of them has successfully blended various influences into their distinct music style. For example, Thompson's songs include traditional epic themes from the Dinaric regions; Severina threads between canzone and an oriental sound. Croatian pop music is fairly often listened to in Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia-Montenegro due to the union of Yugoslavia that existed until the 1990s. Conversely, Bosnian singers like Kemal Monteno and Dino Merlin and Serbian Đorđe Balašević have a large audience in Croatia, as well as many others. Although most people are opposed to turbo folk, an overtly oriental but pseudo-modernized branch of folk music from Serbia and Bosnia, that kind of music also has audience in Croatia.

A brief history of Croatia

The Croat and other Slavic tribes arrived in what is today Croatia and Bosnia in the 7th century. The Croats organized into two dukedoms; the Pannonian duchy in the north and the Dalmatian duchy in the south. The Christianization of the Croats ended in the 9th century. The Croats eventually recognized the Hungarian ruler Coloman as the common king for Croatia and Hungary in a treaty of 1102 (often referred to as the Pacta Conventa). The primary governor of Croatian provinces was the ban.

The 1526 Battle of Mohács was a crucial event in which the rule of the Jagiellon dynasty was shattered by the death of King Louis II. The Ottoman Empire further expanded in the 16th century to include most of Slavonia, western Bosnia and Lika. Later in the same century, large areas of Croatia and Slavonia adjacent to the Ottoman Empire were carved out into the Military Frontier (Vojna Krajina) and ruled directly from Vienna's military headquarters. The area became rather deserted and was subsequently resettled by Serbs, Germans and others.

By the 1700s, the Ottoman Empire was driven out of Hungary and Croatia, and Austria brought the empire under central control. Empress Maria Theresia was supported by the Croatians in the War of Austrian Succession of 1741-1748 and subsequently made significant contributions to Croatian matters.

Following the Revolutions of 1848 in Habsburg areas and the creation of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, Croatia lost its domestic autonomy, despite the contributions of its ban Jelačić in quenching the Hungarian rebellion. Croatian autonomy was restored in 1868 with the Hungarian-Croatian Settlement which wasn't particularly favorable for the Croatians.

Shortly before the end of the Great War in 1918, the Croatian Parliament severed relations with Austria-Hungary as the Allied armies defeated those of the Habsburgs. The People's Council (Narodno vijeće) of the state, guided by what was by that time a half a century long tradition of pan-Slavism, joined Serbia and Montenegro in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes shortly thereafter. The Kingdom underwent a crucial change in 1921, when the new constitution centralized authority in the capital of Belgrade and redrew internal borders to favor the Serb majority, to the dismay of the Croatians led by the Peasant Party of Stjepan Radić. They boycotted the government of the Serbian Radical People's Party throughout the period, except for a brief interlude between 1925 and 1927.

The Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941 allowed the Croatian radical right Ustaše party to come into power, forming the so-called "Independent State of Croatia", led by Ante Pavelić. The puppet regime enacted racial laws, formed eight concentration camps and started a campaign to exterminate Serbs, Jews and Roma. The anti-fascist partisan movement emerged early in 1941, under the command of the Communist party, led by Josip Broz Tito, as in other parts of Yugoslavia. Early in the war, Ustaše opened up the Jasenovac concentration camp, one of the larger sites of mass murder in occupied Europe at the time. By 1943, the partisan resistance movement greatly expanded and was able to expel all Nazi collaborators by 1945, with the help of the Soviet Red Army.

Croatia became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, which was run by Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Tito adopted a carefully contrived policy to manage the conflicting national ambitions of the Croats and Serbs. Croats were again in a minority but the constitution of 1963 balanced the power in the country between the two nationalities. Trends after 1965 led to the Croatian Spring of 1970-71, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy. The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, but this led to the ratification of a new Constitution in 1974, giving more rights to the individual republics.

In 1990, the first free elections were held. A nationalist movement called the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) won, led by Franjo Tuđman. HDZ's intentions were to secure independence for Croatia. Croatia's ethnic Serbs appealed to Tuđman to allow them to have their own autonomous province in the Krajina region should Croatia eventually become an independent state. Tuđman dismissed their fears out of hand, which led to radical elements within the Croatian Serb community gaining power. The excessively polarized climate soon escalated into complete estrangement between the two nationalities and even sectarian violence. In the summer of 1990, Serbs from the mountainous areas where they constitute a majority rebelled and formed an Autonomous Region of the Serb Krajina (later the Republic of Serbian Krajina). Any intervention by the Croatian police was obstructed by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). The conflict culminated with the so-called "log revolution", when Krajina Serbs blocked the roads to the tourist destinations in Dalmatia, and the conflict transformed into armed incidents in the Krajina areas.

The Croatian government declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, and the JNA tried to forcefully maintain the status quo. The Croatian Parliament cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia in October that year. The border city of Vukovar underwent a three month siege during which most of the city buildings were destroyed and a majority of the population was forced to flee. The city fell to the Serbian forces in late November 1991. Soon after, the foreign countries started recognizing Croatia's independence. By the end of January 1992, most of the world recognized the country.

Subsequent UN-sponsored cease-fires followed, and the warring parties mostly entrenched. Armed conflict in Croatia remained intermittent and mostly on a small scale until 1995. In early August, Croatia started Operation Storm and quickly took most of Krajina, causing a mass exodus of the Serbian population. A few months later, the war ended upon the negotiation of the Dayton Agreement.

President Tuđman died in late 1999 and the country underwent many liberal reforms beginning in 2000. An economic recovery as well as healing of many war wounds ensued and the country proceeded to become a member of several important regional and international organizations. The country is currently in process of joining the European Union.