CroatiaHrvatska

Illyrian tribes and Greek colonists held the coast before Rome absorbed it as the province of Dalmatia. The emperor Diocletian, born near Salona, built his retirement palace at Split around 305; when Salona was sacked in the 7th century its refugees moved inside the palace walls and never left. Slavic Croats settled the region in the same period and adopted Christianity from Rome, which set them on the Western, Latin side of Europe's great religious divide.

A Croatian kingdom emerged under Tomislav, crowned in 925. In 1102 the Croatian nobility accepted the Hungarian king, beginning more than eight centuries in personal union with Hungary and later the Habsburg monarchy. The coast went its own way. Venice controlled most of Dalmatia and Istria from the 15th century to 1797, while Dubrovnik, as the Republic of Ragusa, paid tribute to the Ottomans and traded across the Mediterranean as an independent merchant state until Napoleon's troops ended it in 1808.

The Ottoman advance in the 16th century cut Croatia to a 'remnant of remnants' around Zagreb. The Habsburgs created the Military Frontier along the new border and settled it with soldier-farmers, many of them Orthodox Serbs — the origin of Serb communities in Lika, Banovina and Slavonia. The 19th-century Illyrian movement standardised the Croatian language and revived national feeling within the Habsburg state.

In 1918 Croatia joined the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. In the Second World War the Nazi-backed Independent State of Croatia under the Ustaše ran the Jasenovac camp, where Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats were killed; Tito, himself half-Croat, led the Partisan resistance and then the socialist federation. Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991. The Homeland War followed: Vukovar fell after an 87-day siege, Dubrovnik was shelled, and a third of the country was held by Serb rebels until the 1995 operations Flash and Storm, which also drove most of the Krajina Serb population out.

Peace brought slow recovery, then EU membership in 2013, the euro and Schengen in 2023. The war remains present in memorials, veterans' politics and debates about the 1990s and the 1940s, but daily life is firmly European, and tourism has become the main industry.

Croatia has about 3.8 million people and is shrinking: low birth rates and emigration to Germany, Austria and Ireland after EU entry cut the population by nearly 10% between the 2011 and 2021 censuses. Villages in Lika and Slavonia are emptying, while Zagreb and the coast hold on. In summer, the coastal population multiplies with tourists and diaspora returning to family houses.

Identity is layered by region as much as by nation. Dalmatians, Istrians, Zagorci and Slavonians have their own dialects, food and stereotypes. Dalmatians are said to be relaxed to the point of fjaka, a word for summer-afternoon torpor; Zagreb sees itself as Central European and orderly. Istria is bilingual with Italian and has a strong regional party.

Catholicism is part of national identity for most Croats, and the Church is influential on education and family law. Minority communities — Serbs, Bosniaks, Italians, Hungarians, Czechs and Roma — have guaranteed seats in parliament. Relations with Serbs are calm in most places but remain sensitive around war anniversaries.

Coffee is the social institution. A kava can take an hour and serves as meeting, negotiation and gossip. Sport comes close: the football team's World Cup final in 2018 and third place in 2022 are national reference points, and water polo, handball and tennis carry the same pride.

Croatia's mainland coast runs about 1,800 km, but with its islands the shoreline is more than 6,000 km. More than a thousand islands, islets and rocks sit in the Adriatic; about fifty are inhabited. The coast is limestone karst: bare white mountains (Velebit, Biokovo) drop almost straight into clear water with little sand, which is why beaches are pebble and the sea is so transparent.

Karst also made Plitvice. Water running over limestone deposits travertine, building natural dams that stack sixteen lakes in terraces connected by waterfalls. The process is still active, and the park is protected by UNESCO. Krka's waterfalls near Šibenik are the same phenomenon at a larger scale.

Inland the country changes completely. The Pannonian plain in Slavonia is flat, fertile and continental, with the Danube, Drava and Sava rivers and the Kopački rit wetland full of birds. The Dinaric mountains in between — Gorski kotar and Lika — are forest, bears, wolves and lynx, and cold winters.

Winds shape life on the coast: the bura, a cold gusting north-easterly, can close bridges and the Velebit coast road in minutes; the jugo, a warm damp south-easterly, brings heavy seas and, locals say, bad moods. Summer brings the gentle maestral, the sailor's wind.

The coast eats like the rest of the Mediterranean but with a Dalmatian accent: fish grilled over wood with olive oil and blitva (chard and potato), octopus salad, black risotto, pašticada braised for hours with prunes. Peka — meat or octopus baked under an iron bell covered in embers — is the dish families order for celebrations and restaurants cook only with notice.

Istria borrows from Italy and adds its own ingredients: white truffles in autumn from the Mirna valley, hand-rolled fuži and pljukanci pasta, olive oil that wins international competitions, and boškarin, a native grey ox. Inland, Zagreb and Zagorje serve štrukli, turkey with mlinci flatbread and strudel, while Slavonia smokes kulen sausage and cooks fish in paprika stew.

Wine is old and local. Dalmatia's Plavac Mali, a descendant of Zinfandel's ancestor Crljenak Kaštelanski, makes powerful reds on steep sunny slopes (Dingač, Postup). Pošip and Grk are white grapes of Korčula; Istria grows Malvazija and Teran; Slavonia's Graševina is the country's most-planted white. Rakija, travarica and maraschino round off the meal.

Architecture tells the history in stone. Roman Split and Pula, pre-Romanesque churches such as St Donatus in Zadar, Romanesque Trogir, the Renaissance Cathedral of St James in Šibenik, built entirely of interlocking stone slabs, Venetian Gothic palaces on the islands, and Habsburg baroque in Varaždin and Zagreb's Upper Town. Ten Croatian sites are on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

Music divides like the landscape. Dalmatian klapa — small male a cappella groups singing close harmony about the sea and love — is UNESCO-listed and heard in Split's palace and at summer festivals. Inland, tamburica string bands play Slavonian songs. Dubrovnik's Summer Festival stages theatre and classical music in its squares from July to August.

Croatian naïve painting grew from peasant painters in Hlebine in the 1930s and is shown at Zagreb's Museum of Naïve Art. Ivan Meštrović, the most famous Croatian sculptor, left statues across the country and a gallery villa in Split. Contemporary Zagreb has a lively design and street-art scene and the widely copied Museum of Broken Relationships.

Croatia is a parliamentary republic with a president elected directly and a prime minister leading the government. The centre-right HDZ has governed for most of independence, including under Andrej Plenković since 2016; President Zoran Milanović, a former Social Democrat prime minister, won a second term in January 2025. Corruption cases, emigration and housing costs dominate domestic debate.

Tourism accounts for around a fifth of the economy, one of the highest shares in the EU. That dependence shows in the short-let apartments that have taken over old towns, the cruise-ship caps in Dubrovnik, and fines for public drinking and beachwear introduced by coastal towns trying to keep residents. The government has tightened rules on short-term rentals — check the latest local rules.

The euro and Schengen made travel easier and prices higher. Inflation after 2022 hit hard, and many Croatians say they can no longer afford a holiday on their own coast. Labour shortages mean many seasonal workers now come from Nepal, the Philippines and India.