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 While the human habitats were present at the wider city area since the Neolithic (including the well-preserved Roman town of Andautonia), its modern name was recorded for the first time in the 11th century (1094). In that year the Hungarian King Ladislaus founded a bishopric on the Kaptol hill. An independent secular community developed on a neighbouring hill Gradec (Griè). The settlements suffered greatly under the Mongol invasion of 1242, but when they abruptly left, King Bela IV declared Gradec a royal autonomous city in order to attract foreign artisans.
 During the 14th and 15th centuries, the two communities actively tried to best each other - economically and politically. The bishopric would excommunicate Gradec which might respond by burning Kaptol. They only worked together for the occasional large commercial venture - such as the three yearly fairs each lasting two weeks. These two mediaeval hills, Gradec and Kaptol, finally merged into one community, Zagreb, in the early 17th century. They now form the cultural centre of the modern city (the economic and traffic centre shifted southwards since). The bishopric of Kaptol since became the Archbishopric of Zagreb.
The construction of the railway embankment (1860) enabled the old suburbs, which did not represent an urban whole up to then, to merge gradually into Donji Grad, characterized by a regular block pattern. During the Austro-Hungarian era Zagreb was called by its German name Agram.  Working-class quarters emerged between the railway and the Sava and residential quarters on the hills of the southern slopes of Medvednica between the two World Wars.
The blocks between the railway and the Sava were built after the Second World War followed from the mid-1950s by new residential areas south of the Sava river, the so-called Novi Zagreb (New Zagreb). The city also expanded towards the west and the east and "consumed" what were once mere villages at Dubrava, Podsused, Jarun, Blato etc.  The cargo railway hub and the international airport Pleso were built south of the Sava river. The biggest industrial zone (Žitnjak) in the southeast represents an extension of the industrial zones on the eastern outskirts of the city, between the Sava and the Prigorje region.
Urbanized lines of settlements connect Zagreb with the centers in its surroundings: Sesvete, Zaprešiæ, Samobor, Dugo Selo and Velika Gorica. Sesvete is the closest one to become a part of the conurbation and is in fact already included in the City of Zagreb rather than the Zagreb county (which excludes the city). An aerial view of the Zagreb History Back to top |
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