Marcus Kaiser, Swiss Ambassador
Five Stars Zagreb Issue 20 — March 01, 2007.

If you take a stroll through Upper and Lower Town of Zagreb, every step of your walk makes you feel the great history of the city and its wealth, reflected by the beautiful variety of its architecture. It is a city which saw many rulers come and go, was influenced by them, and yet kept much of its own identity.

Foreign guests of the city, like myself, having arrived to Zagreb in October 2003 after many years spent in the big cities of Latin America, surely appreciate the manageability of downtown Zagreb. My first impressions of the city and the region date back to a holiday I spent in the region in 1970. I still vividly remember a busy and proud city, which it still is, with a pulsating life around Jelačić Square. On my strolls through the city, it is always a pleasure to observe from one of the many side-cafés in the pedestrian zone, especially in front of the coulisse of the beautiful facade of the Viennese Palace of our Embassy in Bogovićeva street, the busy street life, hardly ever affected by the weather conditions.

For architecture enthusiasts the city offers a rich illustrative material to be viewed. Especially striking are the many stiles of the bourgeois European architecture of the industrial age and social prosperity prior to World War I. It is good to know that the city authorities make a great effort in protecting and preserving this rich heritage, and when possible, restoring it. A good example of a successful restoration is the central railway-station (Glavni kolodvor) which brought back the majestic ending to the wonderfully planned axis from Zrinjevac to Tomislav Square. How can one resist not to be carried away by the richly designed, remarkable line of buildings around Tomislav Square and further on opposite to Hotel Esplanade, up to the Croatian State Archives, the former National and University Library. Impressed by the power of creative expression of the architecture of that time one reaches the National Theatre in the centre of an area where the creative force of the outgoing 19th century once again manifests itself in an exceptional way.

Special interest is aroused by the numerous well-preserved buildings of the Art Nouveau in its local form of the Secession - of which the most famous one is the building of the Croatian State Archives - the last stylistic period that, rich in variations and forms, celebrated the total artwork, before - let me here recall the programmatic remark of the Viennese architect Adolf Loos "Ornament as crime" - the ornament-free sober modern buildings revolutionised all our towns and at the same time gave evidence of the new times, full of contradictions and difficult challenges. Modern architecture is also well represented in Zagreb with several interesting time witnesses, such as the residential house on Svačić Square and the one on Ibler square, to name but a few.

The Zagreb I grew fond of includes also the untouched near-by recreational area of the gently sloping hills, forests and fields of the Sljeme, reaching all the way to the Upper town. Leaving the pulsating liveliness of Ilica, one reaches Tuškanac, and enters there the contemplatively quite area of Hrvatske šume, an ideal place for considering fresh experiences, new impressions and wonderful emotions.

I wish for Zagreb to keep, in its continuing economic development, the well-deserved place for its inherited, multifaceted legacy that has marked the city so deeply, for the good of the quality of life of its citizens, its guests and its many friends from near and far.