Things to do in Zagreb

Zagreb was two separate medieval towns for most of its history – Kaptol, a bishopric seat from 1094, and Gradec, chartered as a free royal city in 1242 – that only merged into one city in 1850. That history is still visible in the Old Town and WWII Tunnels walking tour, which threads through both halves and down into the Grič Tunnel, a bomb shelter built in 1943 that's had a stranger second life since. For a tour built entirely around the 20th century instead, the Communism and Croatian Homeland War Tour covers four decades under Tito and the war Croatia fought for independence in the 1990s.

Two very different museums round out the city: the Museum of Broken Relationships, the original version of an idea now copied worldwide, and the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum, with a live demonstration cabinet of Tesla's own inventions – not to be confused with the more famous Tesla museum in Belgrade.

Zagreb is also the closest major Croatian city to two of the region's biggest day trips. Plitvice Lakes, paired with the watermill village of Rastoke, is a shorter drive from here than from Split, Zadar or Rijeka. And a single long day covers Ljubljana and Lake Bled across the border in Slovenia, a crossing that's been effectively passport-check-free since Croatia joined the Schengen Area in 2023.