May 30, 2021 - After changing its date due to the pandemic, the Floraart International Garden Show will display a vast and colorful set of flower gardens at Lake Bundek, starting this Tuesday, June 1st.

After being announced, and then canceled due to the epidemiological situation in Croatia, the 55th Floraart International Garden Exhibition was scheduled for a new date, reports Turistčke priče. The big flower show will begin on Tuesday, June 1st, and run through Sunday, June 6th. Floraart will be held on more than 300 thousand square meters of open space in Zagreb's Bundek, in compliance with all epidemiological measures.

Credit: floraart.hr

On the outside, plant exhibitors will be presented with a range of their own products and various floral installations and displays of conceptual solutions in the design of smaller green areas. The competitions "Croatian CUP of Florists" and "International Competition of High School Agricultural Students in Flower Arrangement" will not be held this year.

Credit: floraart.hr

In the western and eastern open part of Lake Bundek, a rich sale of cacti, perennials, and flowers at affordable prices will be organized. Lovers of nature and flowers, after last year's break, will finally come to their senses, beautiful flower arrangements await them all over the lake.

Floraart International Garden Show is organized by Zagreb Holding - Zrinjevac branch, and the co-organizers are the City of Zagreb and the Zagreb Tourist Board. Admission is traditionally free, and it is recommended that citizens park in the east parking lot of the Zagreb Fair.

Along with the coastal cities like Split or Dubrovnik or the hundreds of destinations that you can find in the Croatian islands, Zagreb is also an attractive destination during the summer. You can find more information in our TCN overview on the festivals and events in Zagreb for this summer.

For more information on what the Croatian capital has to offer, such as what to see or do, be sure to check out our Total Croatia guide, Zagreb in a Page 2021. Now in your language!

For more about lifestyle in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

May 27, 2021 - Although Zagreb often gets overlooked in favour of some of the more famous Croatian summer destinations, the capital of Croatia deserves to be more than a brief stopover on your way to the coast. Here are the Zagreb summer festivals you don't want to miss in 2021.

  Murtić100, May 25 - July 18

Marking the centenary of the birth of Edo Murtić, one of the most influential modernist painters in southeast Europe, the exhibition Murtić100, which will feature more than 200 Murtić's paintings, takes place at Home of Croatian Artists (colloquially known as Meštrović Pavillion). Meštrović Pavillion is open for visitors every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Meštrović Pavillion (right) /Pixabay

European Short Story Festival, June 6 - June 11

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the European Short Story Festival (Croatian: Festival europske kratke priče - FEKP). To celebrate the occasion, this years' festival will also have two additional locations - Hvar Town on Hvar and the town of Vis on Vis. Holding the important title of one of the first short story festivals in Europe, European Short Story Festival thus far hosted more than 70 writers from 15 European countries and served as an inspiration for International Short Story Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. This year, the Festival will connect with authors from the other side of the pond - the internationally recognized Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster. For more details, follow the Festival's official Facebook Page.

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 ZagrebDox, June 13 - June 20

This year's 17th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival ZagrebDox takes place at Zagreb Student Centre and Tuškanac Open Air Cinema. The programme is divided into 8 sections - State of Affairs, Controversial Dox, Masters of Dox, Teen Dox, Thriller Dox, and Love, along with two retrospective programmes - one dedicated to Croatian female documentary directors, the other to the Swiss theatre and film director Milo Rau. With 80 short and feature-length titles to choose from, ZagrebDox promises to give an overview of the finest works the documentary film world has to offer. 

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Grič Evenings, July 1 - July 15

Lovers of classical music are in for a treat! For a whole fortnight, starting July 1,  just as the dusk begins to settle, Atrium of Klovićevi Dvori in Zagreb's Upper Town will be filled with the sounds of music commemorating the 40th Grič Evenings. We are looking forward to the programme announcement.

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 Croatian National Theatre Summer Evenings, May 29 - July 3

The Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb hosts an 'open-air' programme on the Republic of Croatia Square (Croatian: Trg Republike Hrvatske), right next to the Croatian National Theatre building. 

The programme will open on May 29 with a concert to mark Statehood Day and Zagreb City Day, respectively. Visitors will get a chance to watch excerpts from some of the most famous operas such as Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, as well as the ballets The Swan's Lake and Giselle, the choreography of the latter having been developed by the champion of the Paris Opera Ballet, José Carlos Martínez.

Croatian National Theatre/Pixabay 

And there you have it - there are at least 5 reasons to extend your stay in Zagreb and discover its vibrant spirit!

For more on travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page. 

There are so, so many wonderful, expertly organised and popular events happening in Zagreb during the summer (and we've written about many of them). And then there's Ljeto na Savi (Summer on the Sava) event, which was planned for last year, got sidetracked, and then re-emerged this year with a sky-high price tag and spectacular failure in terms of the popularity and the number of people visiting the events held there.

Over 11 million kuna (that's more than 1.5 million euro) was invested into the project by the City of Zagreb, and Mayor Milan Bandić kept telling everyone that the project would be a huge success, that it will bring the people of Zagreb back to the Sava river, which they used to enjoy in the sixties and before that, before the river became polluted. Now, admittedly, the pollution is almost completely gone and the river is quite clean again, but the people have not returned. Nor have they for this event.

The "grand opening" of the event was held last week - and almost nobody in Zagreb knew about it.

The public tender for food and drinks and other services was also a complete failure, because not a single company applied, so none were selected. That means - no food, no drinks, nothing near the stage (which cost 11 million kuna and looks nothing like what the plans had envisioned).

The program near Most Slobode (Freedom Bridge) is held every evening, and the benches by the stage are completely empty. The schedule for the events taking place within the Summer on the Sava program have been published on the City of Zagreb's official website, but honestly, after having done some research, that's the only place where you can find it. It's almost as if someone was trying to hide what is happening near the Sava river every day.

The original project was given awards when it was presented to the international public, but what we can see now has almost nothing to do with the original project. The critics keep repeating that an elementary school could've been built and furbished for the money that was spent on this project (or, even more realistically, several old schools could've been reconstructed and refurbished to bring them into the 21st century).

The program of free concerts and movie projections will go on until September the 12th, and hopefully at some point, more people will decide to visit it, so that the money spent on it is not completely wasted.

Summer by Matoš will open in mid-July, and just like last year, it's an event that will revive the Zagreb of old, bringing back temporarily the things our parents used to enjoy when they were young in Zagreb. Some of those things will include dances under the stars, old Fićo cars, game shows and many other interesting events.

Summer by Matoš is a part of the group of events organized in Zagreb during the summer, taking place on the Strossmayer Promenade (Strossmayerovo šetalište) in Zagreb's Upper town, near the sculpture of Antun Gustav Matoš, one of the greatest Croatian modernist authors, who is portrayed sitting on a bench, watching over Zagreb. All over the Promenade and other nearby locations of the Upper town, a group of creative set designers has created imaginative scenes aimed at portraying what life used to be like way back when.

Many small wooden houses will be set-up and decorated, offering foods and beverages (time-appropriate!), there will be parasols and beach chairs, and the 40 days of the event (from July 19th until September 1st) will be filled with numerous programs taking place each day. In the evenings, stand-up comedy by the comedians from the Studio Smijeha will perform, and many pub-quiz evenings will also be organized, with topics from the cult movies and TV shows (such as "Tko pjeva zlo ne misli", Smogovci or ever-present Friends). Retro musical game-show sessions will also be held, if you always wanted to play Pictionary in public and make everyone else around you laugh at how bad your drawings are - Summer by Matoš will give you the opportunity! This summer, create your own memories in Zagreb's Upper Town, and then maybe sometime in the future, the next generations might want to revive those, just like we want to revive the memories of our parents! And don't forget the dances under the summer skies of Zagreb, which will also be happening almost every evening.

This year is another one in a series of years when the summer in the City of Zagreb will be filled with art and culture. To announce that, a press conference was held in the centre of the city last week, where the program for the Zagrebačko kulturno ljeto (ZgKUL, Zagreb Summer of Culture) was presented, zagreb.info writes.

Events that are part of ZgKUL will be held all over the city: on Kralj Tomislav Square, in Upper Town, as well as in Novi Zagreb, and the most beautiful open-air and standard stages of the city will offer the best and the most attractive pieces of culture in Zagreb. More than two thousand artists from Zagreb, the rest of Croatia and abroad will be participating in those events, which will include music, movies, theatre, exhibitions, traditional arts and many other events. 

Milana Vuković Runjić, head of the Zagreb department of culture said at the press conference that Zagreb has done its best trying to keep everyone from going to the seaside. She said that not many cities in the world offer that much culture during the summer. She highlighted the fact that this year, Zagreb is ''going back'' to the Sava river, where, back in 1926, Miss Sava was selected.

One of the first programs was the Zagreb Classic Festival, held on Kralj Tomislav Square this weekend. The musicians were on the stage, and the people attending were sitting on the grass on one of the nicest squares in Zagreb, listening to the Fiesta Latina program performed by Croatian Radiotelevison orchestras with guests such as Los Caballeros and the band Cubismo. The program on Kralj Tomislav Square will continue with performances by Tonči Huljić, the Moscow Cadet Choir, the Croatian Army's Brass Band, the Croatian National Theatre's Opera and Ballet, LADO, and many others.

Marina Bienenfeld, the director of the Zagreb Tourist Board said that the total number of cultural events during Zagreb summer will be over 300! Some programs that are already well-known and popular, like Dvorišta, Crossover Festival on Ribnjak, and Summers by Matoš in Upper town will continue, and new, similar programs will be started this year. We've already written about the Tuškanac summer stage, and Summer on the Museum of Contemporary Arts' Roof will see the unique combination of music, film and literature, and the Atrium of the Klovićevi Dvori will host a rich classical musical experience.

And of course, it's already become a tradition for Zagreb summers to start with the InMusic festival, which starts today. One of the staples of the festival, which is always held in late June in Zagreb, is that it almost always rains, so seeing the weather forecast which says that this year the festival might, in fact, be dry (but only as far as the weather is concerned!) might come as a shock to regular visitors, who say that they enjoy the mud on Jarun as a part of the experience.

A sigh of relief as the long-awaited and much anticipated Zagreb on the Sava project finally gets underway, and there's even been talk of an opening date.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 21st of June, 2019, the "Zagreb on Sava" (Zagreb na Savi) manifestation will take place at three locations on the south and north river coasts of two popular Zagreb bridges, Most Slobode (Freedom bridge) and at the so-called Hendrix's bridge.

Rather unsurprisingly, this Zagreb project failed to begin on June the 19th, as was recently announced by the City of Zagreb, and there's now a brand new date for the opening of the long-awaited "Zagreb on Sava", Vecernji list writes, with accompanying photos.

The planned summer program set to be held on the banks of the Sava river which runs through Zagreb should, at least according to Sanje Cvjetko Jerković, head of the capital city's strategic planning office, begin on July the 5th this year.

The installation of the assembly pavilions has already been completed, and part of the planned activities, she said, will also be organised earlier. - The holiday program, called Odmorko, which is for children who intend to spend their school holidays in Zagreb, is set to begin in the next few days, claims Sanja Cvjetko Jerković.

The schedule for this year's summer has been published on the website of the Zagreb School Sports Association, which is organising the "Odmorko" program on the south side of the Sava river, next to Freedom bridge. According to them, from the 26th of June to the 12th of July, volleyball on the sand can be played. In addition, the Croatian flying disk alliance will organise the playing of various sports with discs on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Various other events have been organised and arranged within the scope of this much anticipated Zagreb summer manifestation, and as previously mentioned, when finally complete, "Zagreb on Sava" will take place in three locations.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more. If it's just Zagreb you're interested in, give Total Zagreb a follow or check out Zagreb in a Page for all you need to know about the increasingly popular Croatian capital.