Zagreb: a practical guide to Croatia's capital

Overview

Zagreb is Croatia’s inland capital and the part of the country most people skip on their way to the coast — which is the first useful thing to know about it. It has no sea, no old-walled harbour, and it is not trying to be Dubrovnik. It is a landlocked, Central-European city of Habsburg apartment blocks, tram lines and café terraces, closer in feel and habit to Vienna or Budapest than to the Adriatic. The city splits cleanly into two: the medieval Upper Town (Gornji Grad) on the hill, and the flat, grid-planned 19th-century Lower Town (Donji Grad) below it, laid out around a horseshoe of parks and squares. Almost everything a visitor wants sits in these two, and the Sava river — well south of the centre — barely enters the picture. Come for the café culture, the food, the walkability and the price, which is noticeably gentler than the coast, and treat it as a two-or-three-day city and a base for day trips rather than a week-long stay.

Where to stay

The centre is small and mostly flat, and the tram network is dense, so you are rarely far from where you want to be. The decision is less about logistics than about whether you want to be up in the quiet, cobbled Upper Town or down in the busier grid, and how close to the main station you need to be for arrivals and day trips.

Upper Town (Gornji Grad) & Kaptol

The oldest part of the city, up the hill: St Mark’s Church with its tiled coat-of-arms roof, the cathedral on the Kaptol side, narrow streets that go quiet after the day visitors leave. Stay here if you want atmosphere and calm evenings, and don’t mind a climb or a short funicular ride to get home. The trade-off is real inconvenience: it is steep, cobbled and awkward with wheeled luggage, choice of rooms is limited, and there is little open late up here — you come down to Tkalčićeva or the Lower Town to eat and drink. Note too that the cathedral’s twin spires have been under scaffolding and repair since the 2020 earthquake, so the classic skyline view is not what the postcards show.

Lower Town (Donji Grad)

The 19th-century grid below the hill, built around the “Green Horseshoe” of linked parks and around Trg bana Jelačića, the main square where the tram lines converge. This is the practical heart: the Dolac market, most of the museums, the café terraces, and tram stops everywhere. Stay here if it is your first visit and you want to walk out into the middle of things — it suits most people. The trade-off is street noise on the busier corridors: trams start early, and the bar streets around Tkalčićeva carry sound on warm nights, so ask for a room off the main drag or into a courtyard.

Around the Main Station & Trg kralja Tomislava

The southern edge of the Lower Town, facing the grand yellow façade of Glavni kolodvor, the main railway station. This is the base for anyone arriving late, leaving early, or using Zagreb as a hub for day trips and onward buses. The park squares here are handsome and the walk to Jelačić square is ten minutes straight up through the gardens. The trade-off is that it is the least characterful part of the centre — more transit than neighbourhood — and the blocks immediately around the station and the nearby bus terminal are dead and a little bleak after dark.

Novi Zagreb & the outer districts

Across the Sava lies Novi Zagreb, the planned socialist-era expansion of tower blocks, and to the west the recreation lake at Jarun. Rooms out here are cheaper and often newer, and Jarun is genuinely pleasant in summer for swimming and running. Stay here only if price is the priority and you are happy to commute: it is a tram ride from everything worth walking to, and there is no reason to base a short sightseeing trip this far out.

When to go

Late spring (May–June) and early autumn (September–October) are the best windows: warm, walkable, with café terraces full and the parks at their best. Summer is hot and can be humid — Zagreb sits inland with no sea breeze — and, crucially, the city partly empties in August as locals leave for the coast, so some restaurants and bars close and the centre feels flat. Winter is cold, grey and often below freezing, but it is also when Zagreb is at its most distinctive: the Advent Christmas market takes over the squares, park and streets of the Lower Town through December and is the single biggest draw of the year, pulling in weekend crowds from across the region. If you come for it, book well ahead; if you want quiet, avoid December entirely.

Getting there & around

The airport sits southeast of the city. There is no rail link — the standard way in is the airport shuttle bus, which runs to the main bus station in the southern Lower Town in around half an hour, from where a tram or short taxi finishes the job; a taxi or ride-hail straight to the centre is quick and not expensive by Western European standards, and worth it with luggage or late at night.

Once here, the backbone is ZET, the tram network — frequent, cheap and covering the whole flat centre, with night trams after the day service stops. Buy and validate a ticket on board or by app; a day pass pays off quickly. The Lower Town is entirely walkable, so you may barely need the tram except to reach Maksimir park, Mirogoj cemetery or Jarun. The one bit of transport that is more attraction than transport is the funicular linking Lower and Upper Town — one of the shortest public rides anywhere, fun once, skippable otherwise, as the stairs beside it are quick.

Don’t rent a car for the city itself — parking is a nuisance and everything central is walkable — but a car makes sense if you plan to roam the surrounding countryside. For day trips, buses are usually better than trains in Croatia: the intercity coach network is faster and more frequent than the railways, and it is the sensible way to the Plitvice Lakes, to the coast, or to the small town of Samobor west of the city. Trains do run north to Ljubljana and on toward Vienna and Budapest if you are travelling overland through Central Europe.

Practicalities

Zagreb is a safe, low-hassle city; ordinary care around the station and the late-night bar streets is all that is needed. Croatia uses the euro and is in the Schengen area, so there are no border formalities from most of Europe, and cards are accepted almost everywhere.

The thing to understand about Zagreb is its coffee culture. Sitting for an hour or two over a single coffee is the normal way to spend a morning, and the Saturday-morning ritual of dressing up and being seen on the Lower Town terraces — locals call it the špica — is a real institution rather than a tourist show. Don’t rush it and don’t expect takeaway habits.

On food, this is continental, not coastal, cooking. The dish to try is štrukli — sheets of dough baked or boiled with fresh cheese, served either savoury or sweet — which is the local speciality and on menus all over the city. The Dolac market above Jelačić square is the place to see what the region actually eats: cheese, cured meats, seasonal fruit and vegetables under the red umbrellas. Meals run a little later than in the north of Europe but not dramatically so, and tipping a little by rounding up is normal and appreciated rather than expected.