Top 10 - sights in Croatia

Compared with other capitals, Zagreb, with its barely one million inhabitants, is rather small. But since the city only became the capital of an independent Croatia in 1991, it may not impress through sheer size, yet it captivates through its young, innovative spirit and its adventurous, cosmopolitan flair. Young people in particular are drawn here who - unlike many other big-city youngsters - see the possibility of genuinely shaping and influencing their city, their country and their world. And many make use of that chance. So Zagreb is far more than the beautiful parks and house façades of the 19th-century building boom, more than the monuments, museums, cafés and shops - what exactly, the artists, students and guides may perhaps be able to tell you, provided they can agree. The only certainty is: Zagreb is changing.

A few metres from the harbour basin, the Romans of the Augustan era built an amphitheatre from the year 30 BC to the first century of our era; it survives almost complete to this day. In the bowl of the ellipse, measuring 130 x 100 m, gladiatorial combats and theatrical performances once took place - today singers compete at concerts for the audience's favour. The two-storey sandstone structure, which offered seats for 20,000 spectators, can be visited on a guided tour. In the course of it you also get to see the cellar passages and the museum of wine and olive presses housed there, and to learn why the plan to dismantle the entire building and ship it to Venice was, after all, abandoned in the 16th century.

It is not only the house façades rising steeply straight out of the water that recall Venice; the whole town of Rovinj is filled with Italian flair: many of the inhabitants of this Istrian port town speak Italian better than Croatian, a church in Venetian style watches over the small town, and a smell of tobacco such as one imagines in the cliché back rooms of film mafiosi drifts through the lanes from time to time. For Rovinj is not only a fishing town but also the seat of a cigarette factory. Numerous monuments and houses are moreover adorned with Venetian lions or modelled directly on famous Venetian buildings such as the campanile. Thus in the step-filled old-town streets, among all the cafés and restaurants, you almost feel you urgently need to stop at the nearest pizzeria - but the ćevapčići here are very good too!

Hidden behind a belt of the most brutal Bauhaus architecture lies the old town of Poreč, one of the most beautiful in Croatia. A chessboard-like layout of the main streets makes orientation easy, and small side lanes provide the obligatory flair on the peninsula. Particularly worth seeing here is the Euphrasian Basilica: between 535 and 550 the three-aisled basilica and the octagonal baptistery were built on the site of an older church, and in the 16th century a bell tower was added as well. Yet more spectacular than the walls is their decoration: particularly beautiful examples of Byzantine mosaic art can be found in this basilica: gold, precious stones and mother-of-pearl form depictions of the Lamb of God, the Virgin Mary, of saints, angels, Jesus and of Bishop Euphrasius - who commissioned the building of the basilica and thus his own monument as well.

Between the Mala Kapela massif and the Plješevica range lies the Plitvice Lakes National Park. Over 1% of the total area of 195 sq km is covered by water; there are 16 lakes in all in this area, which has counted among the UNESCO World Natural Heritage sites since 1979. What distinguishes these lakes above all from familiar fishing ponds or swimming holes is that they are connected by a multitude of small and large waterfalls. Over the millennia the water slowly worked its way through the basalt and limestone of the mountains and formed an incomparable mosaic of land and water surfaces, which finally end, after a 76 m high waterfall, in the river Korana. For reasons of nature conservation, bathing in the lakes is no longer permitted today - but Pierre Brice already took care of that on behalf of us all in the Winnetou films!

In the old town of Trogir the master sculptor Radovan steals the show from himself: one of his masterpieces after another adorns church portals, house façades, town gates and monuments. And there would be plenty to see even without them on this peninsula of just a few square metres: a fort and a cathedral, the old courthouse, town palaces and the largely preserved town wall are only a few examples of what moved UNESCO to declare Trogir's old town a World Heritage Site in 1997. But even apart from the culture, Trogir is worth a visit: the ice-cream parlours outdo one another in portion size and flavour, cafés, art galleries and boutiques of independent fashion and jewellery designers alternate in the lanes, and from the promenade you have a fine view of the glittering Adriatic and the gleaming boats on it.

In the year 285 after Christ a 45-year-old Croat became ruler over the entire Roman Empire: Diocletian. For this tactician free of self-doubt, securing the borders was the most important concern, which is why in the year 293 he also divided the empire into four sectors and made himself ruler of the eastern one. Thus he could set up his seat of government in the city of his birth and was, after years in the eternal city, finally at home again. And not content with that: since power in Rome is very fleeting, from 295 onwards he did everything he could to erect as imposing a retirement residence as possible: the Palace of Diocletian became the origin and is still the heart of Split today. The complex, protected by walls in places 18 m high, measures 215 x 180 m. Catacombs and sleeping chambers, stables and temples, gates and the square paved with marble can be visited without an entrance fee - after all, they have been the town centre for over 1,700 years - and not a museum.

That Dubrovnik was almost completely destroyed twice is no longer apparent in the town today: the car-free city centre attracts tourists and locals alike, a good many particularly beautiful cultural monuments have survived, and the city wall on the seaward side still seems to enfold the city protectively in its arm. Neither the earthquake of 1667 nor the Serbian shelling of 1991-92 discouraged the inhabitants in their conviction that they live in a particularly beautiful place - no wonder that it is not only visitors who like to take a walk along the walls, from which you can count the city's roofs and discover new short cuts. And all shopping fans, friends of pointed-arch windows and adherents of the "third time lucky" creed count not the city's destructions anyway, but how often it has been built…

A pinch of Hvar would make any health food shop happy, for for the greater part of the year the island smells of lavender, which is systematically cultivated here, and of wild herbs. Beyond that an excellent wine grows here, which only benefits from the fact that no place in Croatia has more hours of sunshine to record than Hvar. Yet the island by no means consists only of farms and walking tourists: the coasts are populated by the rich and by those who want to become so. The yachts in the harbour of the island's capital of the same name speak for themselves; the well-kept streets, the modern houses and the committed service in the cafes form the echo. Anyone who does not own a boat of their own can travel by the passenger ferry from Split and explain to the jet set, in small-talk mood, that the Venetian Arsenal with its theatre is actually even more interesting than another lobster with champagne.

The 7.4 sq km Brijuni archipelago consists of 14 flat, richly overgrown islands which attract above all relaxation holidaymakers. Between diving grounds and medieval churches, between golf course and nudist beach, between Tito's villas (to visit them one has to take part in one of the popular boat tours) and the safari park, nothing any longer recalls the malaria epidemic of the 18th and 19th centuries on account of which the imperial and royal Austrians were able to convert a virtually abandoned island into their holiday paradise. Willi Brandt, Richard Burton and Sophia Loren are only a few of the regular visitors who thanked them for it. Yet beyond the holiday season too the Brijuni islands occupy an important role in Croatian history: Tito had the pact of the non-aligned states signed here - and from then on the archipelago was also called the "islands of peace".