Three days in Zagreb: the best small museum in Croatia
Two nights in a Central European capital that most people skip: a hill of baroque streets, a horseshoe of parks and galleries below it, and a cemetery worth crossing town for.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Zagreb
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Zagreb gets treated as the airport you land at on the way to the coast, which is its good fortune and yours. Nothing here has a queue. The old town is a hill of baroque townhouses lit by gas lamps that a man still walks round and turns on. Below it, a ring of parks and museums was laid out in the 1880s in a horseshoe shape, on the assumption that this would one day be a capital city. It took a century, but it was.
The city runs on coffee. Sitting outside for two hours with one cup, on a Saturday morning, watching who walks past, is a local institution with a name (spica) and a dress code. Join in rather than working through a checklist; there is no cathedral here that takes half a day.
Two nights covers it comfortably, with time for the market, one long lunch and the cemetery on the northern edge, which is the single most beautiful thing in the city and full of nobody but locals.
Highlights
- St Mark's roof, tiled with two coats of arms, on a square with the parliament on one side
- The Stone Gate, a medieval gateway turned into a chapel around a painting that survived a fire
- The Museum of Broken Relationships, which is far better than it sounds
- Dolac market under its red parasols, and strukli for lunch afterwards
- Mirogoj, a cemetery of ivy-covered arcades and cupolas designed by the man who rebuilt the cathedral
Where to stay
Zagreb, two nights
The shape of the city is simple. Ban Jelacic Square is the middle, with trams crossing it in every direction. North and uphill is the old town in its two halves. South is the nineteenth century grid, where the parks, the theatre and most of the museums sit in a horseshoe of green squares between the square and the railway station.
Stay in the lower town for quiet and for the parks, or just off Tkalciceva if you want to be able to fall out of a bar and into bed. Both are within fifteen minutes of the market, the parks and the hill.
One recent event still shapes what you see: an earthquake in March 2020 shook the centre hard, damaged the cathedral badly and closed several museums for years. Scaffolding is part of the skyline now, and it is worth checking that a museum has reopened before building a morning around it.
Day by day
Day 1 in Zagreb
Up to Gradec: the Stone Gate, St Mark's roof and the broken relationships
Start on the hill. The eastern gate of the medieval town survived a fire in 1731 that took most of the street, and so, according to the story, did a painting of the Virgin inside it. The gate has been a chapel ever since: benches in a stone tunnel, candles burning at the side, people slipping in on their way to work. Traffic still passes through it, and everyone drops their voice.
Two minutes further up is the small square that runs the country. The parliament sits on one side, the government on the other, and between them stands a church with a roof of glazed tiles laid out as two coats of arms, the older kingdom on the left and the city of Zagreb on the right. The tiles went on in the 1880s during a restoration by Herman Bolle, who left his mark all over this city. The interior is usually only open around Mass.
Then spend the end of the afternoon on the best small museum in the country, three minutes down the street: an entire collection of objects left behind by failed love affairs, each one donated by a stranger with a short note explaining it. It began as a travelling exhibition put together by two Zagreb artists after their own break-up, and it is by turns funny, petty and genuinely moving.
Eat on Tkalciceva or in the lanes off it, then take the funicular down.
- 16:00
Old Town Gate
VisitA medieval gateway that became a shrine after a 1731 fire left a painting of the Virgin untouched. Candles, iron gates, a permanent hush, and a working street running through it.
- 16:40
St. Mark's Square
ArchitectureThe square at the top of Gradec, with the parliament, the government palace and St Mark's church under its tiled roof of two coats of arms.
- 17:30
Museum of Broken Relationships
CultureObjects left over from broken love affairs, each with an anonymous note from the person who donated it. Open late, an hour is enough, and it is much better than the premise suggests.
- 20:00
Dinner below the hill
EatThe paved-over stream between the two old towns is now a street of bars and kitchens, busy from seven and busier at ten.
With more time: The tower at the top of the funicular fires a cannon at noon every day and has done since 1877, which is worth timing a visit for and worth knowing about if you are somewhere below it with a nervous disposition. The climb up its stairs ends at a gallery looking over the roofs.
Day 2 in Zagreb
The cathedral, Dolac market and the ring of parks
Kaptol first. The cathedral's twin spires are the thing you see from every approach road, though they have been wrapped in scaffolding since the 2020 earthquake took the top off one of them. The building goes back to 1217 in its foundations and to a rebuilding after the earthquake of 1880 in almost everything you look at.
Behind it, up a flight of steps, is the market. Dolac has been the city's larder since 1930: a raised open terrace of red parasols selling fruit, cheese and flowers, with the fish hall and the butchers underneath. It winds down by early afternoon, so go in the morning, and buy a bag of whatever is in season.
Lunch is strukli, which you can eat within sight of the market. Then walk south into the parks. What the guidebooks call the green horseshoe is a chain of squares laid out from the 1880s onwards, each with trees, a fountain and a museum or an academy along one side. The first of them is the most enjoyable to sit in, with a bandstand and a meteorological column that has been reporting the weather since 1884.
Follow the squares south to the station and cut back up through the second row. It is an hour's walk with a bench every fifty metres.
- 09:00
Zagreb Cathedral
ReligiousThe twin-spired neo-Gothic cathedral, rebuilt after the 1880 earthquake and under repair again since 2020. Check what is open before you go: access has been limited on and off for years.
- 12:00
La Štruk
EatA small place a minute from the market doing one thing: strukli, baked in cream, savoury or sweet. Cash goes further than patience at lunchtime.
- 14:00
Zrinjevac Square
VisitThe first and best of the horseshoe squares: plane trees, a bandstand, a nineteenth century weather column and the Academy's gallery along one side. Where the city sits in the evening.
With more time: The Art Pavilion at the far end of the parks is a yellow iron-framed hall built for an exhibition in Budapest in 1896 and shipped here afterwards, and the museum of antiquities on the same square keeps the Zagreb mummy, whose linen wrappings carry the longest surviving text in Etruscan. Either is a good hour if the weather turns.
Day 3 in Zagreb
Mirogoj, and the painters of Hlebine before the train
Take bus 106 from behind the cathedral, or walk up through the park in twenty five minutes. Mirogoj opened in 1876 on the slope of the hill, and Herman Bolle wrapped it in an arcade of green cupolas and ivy that is closer to a cloister than a cemetery. Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews and atheists are buried inside the same walls, a decision taken in the 1870s that reads differently after the twentieth century this country had.
It is free, quiet and enormous. Walk the arcades, look at the sculpture, and give it an hour.
Back in town, if there is time before the train or the plane, the museum of naive art on the hill is a short, cheerful last stop: peasant painters from the village of Hlebine who worked in oil on the back of panes of glass, so the colours sit under the surface. It takes forty minutes and nobody else will be in there.
- 09:00
Mirogoj Cemetery
HistoricThe city cemetery, opened in 1876 and designed by Herman Bolle: a long arcade of ivy-covered cupolas, monumental sculpture, and every faith and none buried behind the same wall. Free, and a twenty minute bus ride from the cathedral.
- 12:00
Croatian Museum of Naïve Art
CultureA single-floor collection of Croatian naive painting, most of it from the Hlebine school, painted in reverse on glass. Small, bright and rarely busy.
- 13:30
Last coffee before you go
EatSit outside, order it seated, and let it take as long as it takes. Nobody is going to hurry you off the table.
With more time: With half a day spare, the wooded mountain north of the city has a castle on its slope and a chairlift and hiking trails above it, reached by tram and bus in about forty minutes. In hot weather it is several degrees cooler up there.
Before you go
Getting in and getting around
Franjo Tudman airport is about 17 km southeast, with a shuttle bus to the main bus station that takes half an hour or so and runs to meet flights. Trains from Ljubljana, Vienna and Budapest arrive at the main station on the southern edge of the centre, five minutes from the parks.
Trams are the city's own vehicle: blue, frequent, and running until late, with night lines afterwards. Buy a ticket at a kiosk and stamp it on board. Almost everything worth seeing in the centre is walkable, though, and the ground is flat apart from the hill.
The funicular that connects the lower town to the upper is 66 metres long, has been running since 1890 and takes under a minute, which makes it a strong contender for the shortest public transport ride you will ever pay for.
The two towns on the hill
The upper town is two old settlements that spent centuries feuding: Gradec, the free royal town on one hilltop, and Kaptol, the bishop's town on the next one, with a stream between them that was eventually paved over. That street, Tkalciceva, is now a line of bars.
Gradec is the quieter half, with the parliament, the government building and St Mark's on one small square, plus a few museums and the gaslights. Kaptol is where the cathedral and the market are. You can walk between them in ten minutes.
Eating and drinking
The local dish is strukli: pastry filled with fresh cottage cheese, then either boiled or baked in cream, served savoury or with sugar. Every cafe on the hill does a version. Beyond that the food is continental rather than coastal: grilled meat, sausages, thick bean soups, freshwater fish from the Sava and a Vienna-sized appetite for cake.
Coffee is a ritual, not a takeaway. Order it seated, expect it to arrive with a glass of water, and expect the waiter to leave you alone for as long as you like. In autumn look for young wine and roast chestnuts on the squares; in December the whole centre turns into a Christmas market that has won a fair number of European awards.
Zagreb rewards a slow pace more than a thorough one. The gas lamps, the market, the trams, an hour in the arcades at Mirogoj and a long coffee somewhere with the paper: that is the city as the people who live here use it.
Two nights on the way to the coast is the usual arrangement, and most people who do it come back wishing they had given it three.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Zagreb worth visiting?
- Yes, for two or three days, and especially if you like cities where the point is sitting in them. It is a compact Austro-Hungarian capital with good museums, cheap coffee, no crowds and a food culture of its own. It is not a beach city and does not pretend to be.
- How many days do you need?
- Two nights is right for the centre, the market and Mirogoj. A third buys you the mountain north of the city, the lakes on the western edge, or a day trip to Plitvice or Varazdin.
- When is the best time to go?
- May, June and September for terrace weather, and December for the Christmas market, which fills the parks and squares with stalls and has won European awards several years running. July and August are hot and the city half empties for the coast.
- Can you get to the coast easily?
- Yes. Buses run to Split, Zadar and Rijeka all day and are usually faster than the train. The direct train to Split takes around six hours and is scenic rather than quick. Dubrovnik is a long haul overland, so most people fly.
- What about Plitvice Lakes?
- It is roughly two hours south by bus and doable in a long day, but a rushed one: the park needs three or four hours inside it and the return bus times are tight in low season. If the lakes are the priority, break the journey to the coast there instead.
- Can I move these days around?
- Copy the plan into your own trip and shuffle it. The one thing to keep in the morning is Dolac, which is packing up by early afternoon.