Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, on the Sava River below the southern slopes of Medvednica mountain. Its old center grew from two medieval towns on neighboring hills, the bishop's Kaptol and the royal free town of Gradec, which were joined in 1850.

King Ladislaus I of Hungary set up a bishopric on Kaptol at the end of the 11th century, the first written record of the name Zagreb. Gradec received its charter as a royal free town from Béla IV in the Golden Bull of 1242. St. Mark's Church on Gradec has a roof of colored tiles showing the coats of arms of Zagreb and of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. The Lower Town grew south of the hills in the 19th century around a chain of parks and squares known as the Green Horseshoe.

Pliva, the drug maker of the city, discovered the antibiotic azithromycin in its laboratories and sold it under the name Sumamed. Končar builds electric generators and the low-floor trams that run on the streets of Zagreb. Kraš, a confectioner based in the city, makes Bajadera, layered pralines of nougat and almonds sold in a gold box.

Slavoljub Penkala, an engineer who settled in Zagreb, patented a mechanical pencil and a fountain pen in the early 20th century and made them in his own factory there. The Zagreb School of Animated Film won an Academy Award in the early 1960s with Ersatz by Dušan Vukotić, the first animated short made outside the United States to receive one. The Museum of Broken Relationships began in Zagreb as a traveling exhibition by the artists Olinka Vištica and Dražen Grubišić and shows objects left behind by ended love affairs, each with the story its donor wrote.