Croatian War of Independence Tour

Zagreb wears its 1990s history quietly, and this private walk begins by going further back than most visitors expect: to the end of the Second World War and the Yugoslavia that Josip Broz Tito built and held together. Tito was the central figure in the country’s domestic politics and its foreign affairs, and his death set the unravelling in motion. By 1991 Slovenia and Croatia were the first republics to declare independence, at a cost Croatia is still reckoning with. Getting that sequence straight is what makes the rest of the walk land.

From there the tour moves through the city centre to the places where the war stopped being abstract. You stop on Vlaška Street and Petrinjska Street, at the Croatian National Theatre and Republic Square, at the Croatian Parliament, and at the Memorial Centre of the Zagreb Rocket Attacks, which holds fragments of the rockets that struck civilian buildings in the city. Along the way your guide points out what was hit, what was rebuilt, and how ordinary life carried on around it.

The tour runs about ninety minutes and is always private, so the pace, the detours and the questions are yours. Reviewers single out guides who handle difficult material with context rather than drama, including one who teaches history for a living. At the end, every guest is given a small gift to take home as a reminder of the city.