Zagreb Live Cam

There is a total of 6,694 settlements in Croatia: 205 cities and 6,489 villages. 57.1% of the population lives in cities, 42.9% in villages. Four cities have more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. The largest city is Zagreb with about 1.1 million inhabitants, the second largest is Split with 190,000, Rijeka has 170,000, and Osijek has 105,000 inhabitants. The population of seven cities (Dubrovnik, Sisak, Vukovar, Varazdin, Šibenik, Vinkovci and Bjelovar) ranges from 25,000 to 50,000.

The origins of Zagreb, the capital of the Republic of Croatia, now inhabited by some million people, go right back to the year of 1094, when the diocese of Zagreb was first established, with a settlement for the chapter very soon being founded alongside it. And it is actually from this very time that the earliest written musical remains derive. Musical development was further contributed to by the foundation of the cathedral school in the 13th century, the first organ being mentioned as early as 1359. With the gradual influx of musicians from other countries, profane music developed as well, the first secular forms of musicmaking appearing; they had become very well established indeed by the 18th century. In the 19th century, the musical life of Zagreb was in full bloom; 1826 was a notable year that saw the foundation of the Croatian Musical Institute, under the aegis of which the first music school opened, the germ of today's Musical Academy. The Croatian National Theatre has been in operation since 1870, moving into its present-day building, the work of Viennese architects Hellmer and Fellner, in 1895. As well as a number of smaller halls and other facilities for concerts, since 1973 Zagreb has had the contemporarily built and equipped Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, a modern acoustic complex with two concert halls, the largest of which can accommodate an audience of one thousand and eight hundred. It has seen a very lively and interesting musical life for over quarter of a century now, linking Zagreb in the best possible way with the most important trends in the European cultural tradition and the current world movement.