Croatian Revival, by Vlaho Bukovac, the curtain at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. Croatia has 60 professional theatres where more than 8,733 performances were given in 2012 to over 1.7 million viewers. In addition, more than 2,800 performances were put on in children's theatres, and more than 1,100 in amateur theatres.

Neptune's Fountain at the Trsteno Arboretum, founded in 1498 and the oldest arboretum in the world. According to the World Tourism Organization, with nearly 9.9 million foreign tourists in 2011, Croatia was the 6th Mediterranean tourist destination after France, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece.

The Croats put the Glagolitic script into print in the very earliest period of European printing, in the 15th century, and five incunabula were printed in Glagolitic. The incunabulum, Glagolitic Missal, was published on 22 February 1483, in Croatian Church Slavonic, only 28 years after Gutenberg’s Bible. It is the first ever missal in Europe to have been printed in a non-Latin script, and the perfection of the letters and the beauty of the typesetting and printing make it an absolute masterpiece of the printer’s art.

The crowning of the Croatian king Tomislav, Oton Iveković (detail, 1904-1905). Tomislav was crowned as the first Croatian king in 925.

About 60% of the population live in urban centres, and one in four live in one of the four largest cities (Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, Osijek).

Contemporary Croatia

The process of the emergence of the contemporary state of Croatia began with the crisis in Communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, the strengthening of democratic movements and the restoration of multi-party systems. Such movements ...

Climate

Thanks to its position in the moderate climate belt along the 45th parallel, Croatia enjoys a predominantly moderate climate, with four clearly marked seasons. Local climate differences are determined primarily by the diversity of the relief ...

Adriatic Sea and islands

The Adriatic Sea is the most indented section of the Mediterranean Sea on the continent of Europe. In its present shape, it was formed by the rising of the sea level by 96 metres following the last ice age ...

Counties

The basic units of regional self-government are the counties (županija in Croatian). The present administrative territorial division of the country was introduced in 1997, when the 1992 division was changed. Smaller administrative territorial units within counties ...

Regions

The region of modern Croatia covers a large number of historical and geographical regions of different origins and size. These reflect the political fragmentation of the Croatian lands in the past, and partly also the position of Croatia at the meeting-point ...

Literature

Croatian medieval literature, unique in being produced in three languages (Latin, Old Slavonic and the vernacular) and three scripts (Roman, Glagolitic and Cyrillic) developed from the 8th to 16th century in the form of poetry, verse dialogue ...

Music

The coexistence of two types of performance in Croatian ecclesiastical music was the outcome of medieval European culture: Gregorian chant (preserved in the late 11th century Neum Codex) developed in Dalmatia and Istria into ...

Croatia in brief

Croatia has been present on the contemporary international political stage since its independence from the Yugoslav Federation, i.e. for a little over two decades, but in terms of history and culture, is one of the oldest European countries ...