Great things to do in Zagreb in June

Zagreb's streets have been bustling and thriving all December, with Advent bringing all the spectacular sights, smells and tastes of the season to the city. Expect this wonderful ambience to continue into New Year, not least on New Year's Eve itself, when live music and DJs will join the attractions at the Advent sites. But, for those who'd rather be inside, or those who'd like to celebrate the New Year long into the morning, these are some of the best venues and parties you can attend.

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.

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.

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.

Christmas is a wonderful time to be in Zagreb. Festivities have always been enthusiastically observed in the capital, but the recently revamped advent programme has given proceedings an exciting modern edge - which means that you can follow up a carol concert with a DJ set, and a craft beer with a mulled wine. Draped in twinkly fairylights, the city looks like it was dreamed up for the front of a Christmas card, and all you really need to do to feel festive is stroll through the markets. Follow our Christmas guide, and we guarantee you'll be bubbling with Christmas cheer.  RECOMMENDED: more great winter destinations in Croatia

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.

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.

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...

Zagreb can seem a bit grey and depressing in January when the kaleidoscopic Advent decorations are pulled down and the streets turn into a graveyard of jaundiced Christmas pines. But there's enough fun stuff going on this month to help you beat the post-Christmas blues. Don't miss 'Night of the Museums' - when the city's major cultural institutions throw open their doors for a special after-hours event, a free festival of late-night culture. RECOMMENDED: more great things to do in Zagreb this winter.

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.