Neptune's Fountain at the Trsteno Arboretum, founded in 1498 and the oldest arboretum in the world. According to the World Tourism Organization, with nearly 9.9 million foreign tourists in 2011, Croatia was the 6th Mediterranean tourist destination after France, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Greece.

The most popular sports in Croatia are football, basketball, handball and water polo. According to the FIFA rankings in June 2013, the Croatian football team ranks 4th in the world, behind Spain, Germany and Argentina.

The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the oldest in Southeast Europe (1866) and has up to 160 full members (academicians) in its 9 departments. It also encompasses several scientific-research and art institutes, as well as numerous scientific boards and councils.

The Croats put the Glagolitic script into print in the very earliest period of European printing, in the 15th century, and five incunabula were printed in Glagolitic. The incunabulum, Glagolitic Missal, was published on 22 February 1483, in Croatian Church Slavonic, only 28 years after Gutenberg’s Bible. It is the first ever missal in Europe to have been printed in a non-Latin script, and the perfection of the letters and the beauty of the typesetting and printing make it an absolute masterpiece of the printer’s art.

With 13 entries on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Croatia is, with Spain, the European country with the highest number of entries.

Between Venice, Vienna and Pest

In the Great (Viennese) War (1683–99), large parts of Croatia and Slavonia were liberated from Ottoman rule and the border of the Dubrovnik Republic was finally determined. The Venetian Republic, which had established ...

Gastronomy

The main feature of Croatian cuisine is its diversity, so it is impossible to single out a typical cuisine or typical dish. Different natural and economic circumstances and diverse cultural influences have affected the development of several ...

Rivers and lakes

About 62% of the territory covered by the branching river network belongs to the Black Sea catchment basin. The longest Croatian rivers, the River Sava (562 km) and River Drava (505 km) also belong to this catchment basin, as does the Danube ...

Nature protection

A large number of protected natural areas and features show that Croatia is a country of exceptional, diverse, and comparatively well-preserved natural beauty, of which some examples, such as the Plitvice Lakes, are famous ...

Fine arts

Works preserved from the oldest stylistic periods bear witness to the continuity of creativity and to the talents of local people, and place the Croatian art and architecture heritage on an equal footing with the main components of world creative output ...

Emergence of Croatia

The first Slavic tribes arrived in the area which is modern-day Croatia in the 6th and 7th centuries, during the Migration Period. Among them were the Croats, who are mentioned in sources in connection with a wider area, but were ethnically most ...

Climate

Thanks to its position in the moderate climate belt along the 45th parallel, Croatia enjoys a predominantly moderate climate, with four clearly marked seasons. Local climate differences are determined primarily by the diversity of the relief ...

Croatia in brief

Croatia has been present on the contemporary international political stage since its independence from the Yugoslav Federation, i.e. for a little over two decades, but in terms of history and culture, is one of the oldest European countries ...