Great things to do in Zagreb in June

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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

Zagreb attractions number plenty of stately icons among their ranks, owing to the city's status as a former Habsburg hub and capital of a new nation. Towering cathedrals, a venerable zoo and a stately cemetery all provide plenty of things to do in Zagreb. Our experts pick out the best.

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...

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.

Whether you're having a night off the booze or have called time on drinking altogether, there are plenty of ways to socialise in Zagreb and still have fun. Board and tabletop game nights provide a sober, sociable alternative and are a great place to mingle with new people. Zagreb is no exception to the popularity of tabletop game culture and you can find both playrooms dedicated to tabletop games and venues which hold regular events. Here are five of the friendliest where you'll be welcomed for your gaming enthusiasm and not for your Croatian skills. RECOMMENDED: the 71 best things to do in Zagreb.

Overlooking the main square, and in the shadow of the Cathedral is Zagreb’s most precious resource: the Dolac. This is more than just a place of trade. In this fractured capital of Upper and Lower towns, the Dolac is a constant, a hub of classless social interaction, a weathervane of the local economy and Zagreb’s connection with the surrounding villages, even with distant Dalmatia. Traders voices are either distinctly urban (Kaj), provincial, or come from the deepest south. Around the square are little bars and eateries offering gableci, cheap late-morning lunches. Daily from 7am, the Dolac is abuzz until the early afternoon.  After considering several locations, the city fathers had a main market built between Kaptol and Tkalčićeva, Zagreb’s most atmospheric thoroughfare. Opened in 1930, it comprised a raised open square lined with stalls of fruit, vegetables and eggs. At street level was an indoor market for meat and dairy traders, then in 1933, a fish market – based on the one in Trieste – was set up alongside. This layout remains in place today, with the addition of a mezzanine in the indoor section and the bright reconstruction of the Ribarnica (the fish market). Florists now occupy the top level, where the Dolac meets Opatinova. Entering from the street, you walk through the main hall of bakers and butchers. Pekara Dinara from Sesvete is so renowned there are queues outside its two downtown outlets. Of the butchers, Pečun-Pečun is a quality purveyor of sausages...