croatia.eu land and people

Croatia in Europe through the ages

Bearing in mind the specific features and influences which are interwoven in it, the root and expression of Croatian culture has always been unambiguously European. Within today’s European Union, several cultural circles can be identified: Central European, Austrian, German, Italian, French, Iberian and British, with all of which Croatia has had rewarding contacts through the ages.

Development of the state

The names Croat and Croatia in the country as it is today have gradually superseded the ethnically wider concept of the Slavs and their first territorial groupings, Sklavonija, Slovinje (Sclaviniae), and the individual...

Historical and cultural relations

In their early cultural history, the Croats appear as a ‘nation of three scripts’. Along with Latin, in different variations, they also used two Slavic scripts, Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Both appeared in the 9th century and were...

Croatian-French relations

Croatian-European links in the Carolingian period retained the characteristics of links with wider Western culture overall; the Carolingian Renaissance gave that culture a general European significance within...

Croatian-Italian relations

Geographical proximity and the gravitation of Italian regions towards the Adriatic Sea, along with the ecclesiastical and political tendencies of Croatia towards the West, dictated, in spite of many mutual prejudices...

Croatian-Iberian relations

Because the Mediterranean Sea served as a geographical link, Croatian historical ties with the Iberian Peninsula were more developed with Spain than with Portugal. As an oceanic country first and foremost...

Croatian-British relations

In the Old English 9th century translation from the Latin by King Alfred of the History of the World by Paulus Orosius, to which the king appended a review of more recent history up to his own day, White Croatia is...

Croatia and Central European relations

Apart from its relations with leading European nations and cultures, relations with Central European nations have also been important to Croatia for historical and...