Zagreb keeps its art in Habsburg palaces and factory squats alike. Three days here run from old masters on Zrinjevac to naïve painters on glass, a neo-Baroque opera house, Bollé's cemetery arcades and the studios of Pierottijeva.
Croatia's largest modern art museum, in Igor Franić's glass slab across the Sava since 2009. Around 12,000 works trace the ex-Yugoslav avant-garde, and Carsten Höller's steel slide drops you three floors. Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00.
Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer's 1884 bequest of some 250 European old masters — Fra Angelico, Bellini, Veronese, Tiepolo — on the top floor of the Academy palace. The Baška tablet, Croatia's oldest Glagolitic stone, stands in the lobby.
Hermann Bollé's 1888 palace holds around 100,000 objects of applied art: Gothic altarpieces, Biedermeier furniture, Viennese Secession glass, clocks, ceramics and a photography wing. The skylit atrium and grand staircase justify the ticket alone.
Ivan Meštrović's 17th-century Upper Town house, where the sculptor lived and worked from 1922 to 1942 before donating it to the state. Roughly 100 works in wood, marble and bronze fill four rooms plus the walled courtyard he laid out himself.
Fellner & Helmer's 1895 neo-Baroque house in ochre and gold, home to opera, drama and ballet companies. The auditorium hides Vlaho Bukovac's painted curtain 'Croatian National Revival'; Meštrović's Well of Life sits out front.
The world's first museum devoted to naïve art, in the Raffay Palace since 1952. Some 80 works by the Hlebine School — Generalić, Mraz, Rabuzin, Večenaj — peasant painters who worked in reverse onto panes of glass.
Set in the Convent of the Poor Clares, with Roman and medieval foundations exposed in the cellars. Over 5,000 objects cover the 1880 earthquake, the Illyrian movement, reconstructed shopfronts and Zagreb between the wars.
Zagreb's 1,850-seat hall, opened 1973 in walnut and travertine, home stage of the Zagreb Philharmonic. The autumn-to-spring season adds jazz cycles and the Zagreb Soloists, while the small hall runs chamber and new-music nights.
Hermann Bollé's 1876 necropolis: an ivy-covered arcade some 500 m long under copper cupolas, shared by Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim graves. Sculpture by Meštrović, Rendić and Frangeš-Mihanović lines the colonnade.
A neighbourhood square ringed by 1920s blocks, with produce stalls under plane trees on weekdays and a Sunday antiques fair where dealers lay out Yugoslav enamelware, old cameras, vinyl and Austro-Hungarian postcards.
A 1903 Secession rotunda holding around 70,000 objects: Pannonian, Dinaric and Adriatic folk dress, gold-embroidered Konavle costume and lace from Pag, plus non-European material gathered by the travellers Mirko and Stevo Seljan.
Autonomous culture centre in a former pharmaceutical factory, squatted since 2007: a gig hall, galleries, artist studios and a courtyard of layered murals repainted year after year. Concerts and exhibition openings most weekends.