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Historical walks / Nineteenth-century Zagreb · Donji grad

Agram

Follow the nineteenth-century city's expansion into Donji grad (Lower Town): rail connections, civic institutions, public squares and new ideas about what a capital could be.

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1h 30mBan Jelačić Square, by the Manduševac fountainStep-free route
Croatian National Theatre today
Croatian National Theatre in 1895
Croatian National Theatre

The walk

A closer look

01

The railway city

The first railway reached Zagreb in 1862. Growth spread south towards the station as the city moved beyond its older hilltop centres.

The main railway station seen from the square in front of it, in the 1880s
Glavni kolodvor, the main railway station, in the 1880s
02

New civic life

Donji grad's squares and institutions took shape through the second half of the nineteenth century, including the parks now known as the Green Horseshoe.

Tree-lined Zrinjevac park with its music pavilion, gardens and people walking
Zrinjevac and its music pavilion
03

After 1880

The 1880 earthquake damaged much of the old city and accelerated a period of rebuilding and urban change.

Jelačićev trg, north side, with the equestrian monument at right
Jelačićev trg, north side, 1880
Agram seen from the south, an engraving with Gradec on the hill above Kaptol and its church tower
Agram in 1689, from Valvasor's engraving
Agram seen from the south, a lithograph with haymakers in a meadow before the town
Agram in 1845
Ban Jelačić Square with the equestrian monument, seen from Ilica
Ban Jelačić Square in 1884

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