Zagreb, Croatia

School children learning their history

The Palace Hotel where we're staying is sitting right in the middle of the town of Zagreb, just a few blocks from many of the museums throughout the city. We are in Lower Town a section that was primarily built in the 18th and 19th century, filled with cafes and restaurants. We took the funicular (all of 127 meters long) up to the Upper Town built in medieval times. Here the streets are still lit by gas lamps, even though this was the home town of Tesla, the proponent of alternating current electricity. Our first stop was the Museum of Naïve Art (Folk-art). Here we saw a unique art form - oil on glass, the local school led by Ivan Generalic. The technique requires the artist to make a reverse sketch of the painting and then put the sketch under the glass as they begin painting. Here the artist has to start with the details first, the lines of architecture, or figures, then fill in the lines and finally deal with the background - just the opposite of what you would do on canvas and making it very difficult to reverse mistakes. Just up from the museum was St. Mark's church with its bright tile roof with the coat of arms of ancient Croatia and Zagreb. Then we visited one of the medieval gates where the painting of the Virgin Mary of Stone survived a fire and now has become a local pilgrimage location. We kept running into a school group who were being led around the city learning their Croatian history. They were met by various characters like the Hungarian king, a girl in typical costume for the area and a priest. The Cathedral of the Assumption dominates another square. Inside is a sercofogus of Arch-Bishop Stepinac who was archbishop during World War II. He managed to save 200 Jews as well as many others to escape the Nazis. After the war, Tito asked him to break from Rome and form the Croatian Catholic Church, so he could control the church. The archbishop refused and was later tried and convicted of sympathizing with the Nazis. Only after his death was it shown that the charges were baseless.

 

St. Marks

We found lunch off the main square and then decided to visit one of the museums. Since we're not much into art, we went to the Ethnographic museum, described by Fromm as under appreciated, but interesting. Here we saw the costumes of the various parts of Croatia on the top floor. Unfortunately, the museum was quite small and its exhibits on costumes and common articles throughout the world was pretty poor and only described in Croatian. After a lot of walking, we had a relaxed afternoon. We went to dinner at the Restaurant Boban for pasta, some of the best we've ever had. To be expected, since this area was heavily influenced by the Italians across the centuries.