Great things to do in Zagreb in June

Compact and easy to navigate, Zagreb contains plenty of historic sights and fascinating galleries, complemented by destination restaurants, clusters of busy bars and numerous live-music venues. The main square divides the hilly Upper Town – museums, institutions of national importance, panoramic views – from the flat, grid-patterned streets of the Lower Town, with its gastronomic landmarks, designer boutiques and art galleries. Spread out east and west are areas of bucolic greenery while south over the Sava river stretches the post-war residential blocks of Novi Zagreb. Done something on this list and loved it? Share it with the hashtag #TimeOutDoList and tag @TimeOutEverywhere. You can also find out more about how Time Out selects the very best things to do all over the world, or take a look at our list of the 50 best things to do in the world right now.

Zagreb is quickly gaining the big-city vibe of Vienna and Budapest, its Habsburg-era counterparts, while managing to hold on to its distinctive charm. Set below Mount Medvednica, where the last Alpine foothills meet the Pannonian plain, the city still feels like a big village. You can walk to most places you'd want to visit and the majority of tram routes pass through Trg bana Josipa Jelačića, the main square, making the city easy to navigate. Everything has an order common to German-speaking Europe, but with a Balkan sense of fun and after dark hedonism. Read our daytripper's guide to experiencing the best of Zagreb in one day. RECOMMENDED: more great things to do in Zagreb.

The distance from Zagreb to Split is just over 400km. The quickest way from Zagreb to Split is to zoom down the A1 motorway, a journey south of just over four hours and 400km plus, passing close to Zadar and Šibenik. Croatian motorways have a toll system, so be prepared to pay about €25 between the two main cities. To make the journey more comfortable, you can organise a Zagreb to Split transfer in style with Octopus Transfers. In fact, why not go from Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes which is on the route to Split, and take in the amazing cascades and waterfalls of Croatia’s most stunning national park. A Zagreb to Split via Plitvice Lakes transfer is both a cost and time effective way of travel! Buses from Zagreb to Split leave about every 30 minutes, average direct journey time around five hours, tickets €20. You’ll pay an extra €1 for every item of luggage you store in the hold. Some Zagreb to Split bus services actually stop at Plitvice Lakes, so again you can break up your journey, either with two buses or by arranging a transfer with Octopus from Zagreb to Plitvice or Plitvice to Split. Trains from Zagreb to Split take about six hours during the day, eight hours overnight, allowing you to arrive in Dalmatia with the day ahead of you. A Zagreb to Split train ticket is around €30 but you can also pay a supplement for a couchette, with extra services laid on in high season. If you are after a Zagreb to Split flight, the National carrier, Croatia Airlines, provides around half-a-

Born out of the ubiquity of concrete and a love for functional shapes, the architecture of Brutalism is frequently misunderstood. The very term seems to attract us for all the wrong reasons, inviting us to admire buildings for their roughness, or their obstinate refusal to be pretty. Recent years have seen the word Brutalism fall victim to a warped social media aesthetic in which it is exoticized as something east European, communist, falling to bits – an object of nostalgia or pity that is shorn of its social context. Touring the modernist neighbourhoods of Zagreb is something of an antidote to this – Croatian Brutalism is restrained and sympathetic to its surroundings in a way rather different to the application of the same style in, say, Sheffield or South London. Not all of it is pretty – Brutalism was above all a functional style designed to provide social planners with cheap solutions to big problems. However, there is plenty here of compelling interest – enough to justify Zagreb’s growing reputation as an unsung treasure-trove of Central-European modernism.

For the first-time visitor, Zagreb seems distinctly urban, the historic thoroughfares of the Upper Town and grid-patterned streets of the Lower Town far removed from the narrow river Sava to the south. Yet waterside recreational attractions are within easy reach of the centre, whether it’s windsurfing on Lake Jarun, swimming in Bundek, bird watching at Savica or even golf the other side of the Sava. RECOMMENDED: More great things to do in Zagreb.

This attractive, Habsburg-era city is a grand place for a winter break in Croatia. The month-long Advent festival transforms the city into a lively celebration of Christmas, with several major locations dressed up with wooden chalets and glittering canopies of fairy lights. On crisp winter days, the snow-tipped Sljeme mountain range is an enjoyably bracing hike - and an unbeatable location for a beer once you've reached it's summit. Cutting-edge modern art, wonderful boutique shopping and sightseeing opportunities aplenty complete the winning mix. RECOMMENDED: more great things to do in Zagreb.

An easy tram hop from the city centre, the beautiful tree-lined cemetery of Mirogoj is a rarely visited attraction. Founded in 1876 and designed by Hermann Bollé, few visitors reach Mirogoj, but those who do discover an expansive space filled with excellent sculptures and seemingly endless tiled arcades. Here are ten reasons why you should make the journey to Mirogoj Cemetery. 1) It's an architectural treasure Designed by Hermann Bollé, the architect responsible for Zagreb’s Cathedral, Mirogoj cemetery covers a vast area that stretches up towards the base of Medvednica. The green oxidised copper domes, with their intricate, pastel coloured inner designs, are magnificent. So too are the tiled arcades that appear to stretch on into infinity, past an endless succession of memorials and flowers. The arcades are especially striking in the summer time when they are clad in bright green ivy and the sun patterns the innumerable columns and arches. Bollé is buried here alongside plenty of notable local figures. 2) The Croatian poet Petar Preradović is buried here Mirogoj is an excellent place to indulge in a spot of taphophilia, or tombstone tourism as it is otherwise known. The cemetery is the final resting place of Petar Preradović, a seminal figure in Croatian Romantic poetry. Born in the north-eastern village of Grabrovnica, Preradović fought as a soldier in the Wars of Italian Unification and produced some of the country’s most celebrated verse. He

Welcome to the weekend with our guide to the best events in the capital. The week is over and it's time to attend concerts, exhibitions and more fabulous events over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. RECOMMENDED: more great things to do in Zagreb.

A pop up events space in upper town, overlooking the city, which is utilised for summer events and Zagreb's famous Advent. In these periods, you can usually find this whole street filled with temporary food and drinks concessions and, at Caffe de Matoš, entertainment programmes which accompany the festivities, particularly live music.

Like Budapest, Zagreb is two cities divided by a river. Novi Zagreb lies to the south of Zagreb, across the river Sava, and was developed to house the growing population. Its skyline is dominated by the socialist realist monoliths, that I, on a grey January morning, set out to explore on foot.  As an important hub within Tito’s Socialist Yugoslavia up until the ‘90s, when the country broke apart in the bloodiest wars of Europe’s recent history, Zagreb at one point vied with Belgrade for leadership of the country. During this period Croatia got more than its fair share of socialist realist architecture, made from identical concrete panels that were rolled out on vast production lines. The city now boasts some of the largest examples of this architecture in Central Europe, much of which can be found south of the river.  Visitors staying in the pastel coloured Old Town may be put off by nicknames such as ‘Commie blocks’, but should remember that at the core of the housing blocks is a utopian vision of how the cities of the future might look. Forget the oxidised copper roofs of the Austro-Hungarian centre, the boxy housing estates are where you’ll find the interesting stuff. I don’t walk far from the centre before I hit Béton brut (raw concrete, from which we get the word ‘Brutalism’). Down Savska cesta just before the river are the Rakete, three rocket shaped towers that were modified after the 1963 Skopje earthquake to withstand further tremors. The nickname comes from the ang