Interesting Facts about Croatia

Here are some interesting facts about Croatia. These facts contain some really interesting and useful information about the country.


The Dalmatian dog from the film "101 Dalmatians" was named after Dalmatia, in which most of the Croatian Adriatic is located.

The first public theatre in Europe was opened in 1612 on the island of Hvar, in the town which "Conde Nast Traveler Magazine" entered at the fifth place on its Top Ten list of best island towns in the world.

By the end of the third century AD, the Roman emperor Diocletian decided for construction of his palace the place where the city of Split is located today. The Palace of Diocletian is one of the best known integral architectural and cultural constructions in the world, which, due to its preservation and beauty, UNESCO entered in its registry of World Cultural Heritage in 1979.

In the small town of Trogir, 30 km away from Split, founded in 3rd century BC, there is one of the best preserved Romanesque-Gothic complexes in the world. Trogir is an excellent example of a medieval town built on and conforming with the layout of a Hellenistic and Roman city and it is therefore also on the World Cultural Heritage list of UNESCO.

Before Newton's discovery, the town of Dubrovnik, which has been on the World Cultural Heritage list of UNESCO since 1979, owned a telescope which was constructed by Marin Getaldic (1568-1626), the greatest Croatian scientist of that time.

The necktie has its origin in Croatia (in Croatian: Kravata, English: Cravat, French: Cravate, German: Krawatte, Italian: Cravatta, Spanish: Corvatta) and that the word "cravat" came from the word "Croat" (Hrvat in Croatian); so called because worn by Croats in the French army during the Thirty Years' War. In their own way, with the cravat, the Croats have started conquering the world from the coasts of the Adriatic Sea from 17th century. The consequences of that conquering are today felt around the necks by 600 million businessmen worldwide.

Marco Polo (1254-1324), an adventurer, merchant and one of the best known world travelers, whose book "The Travels of Marco Polo" is the first tourist book in the world, comes from Korcula on Korcula island in Croatia.

In 1458 Benko Kotruljevic from Dubrovnik wrote one of the first books on world economic literature, "On Trading and the Perfect Merchant", and that he was the first to establish the basis of modern double-entry book-keeping.

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was staged in Dalmatia.

The writer Vladimir Nabokov always spent his summers in Opatija as a boy.

Agatha Christie spent her second honeymoon in Dubrovnik and Split.

James Joyce was a teacher of English in Pula from 1904 and 1905, in the town that has existed for three millennia with one of the best preserved Roman amphitheatres worldwide.

The Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson spent their vacations in Dalmatia.

Luka's pit ("Lukina jama"), the tenth by depth in the world (1392 m), is located in Croatia on Velebit Mountain.

The founder of San Marino, a small independent republic in the northeast of Italy, was the sculptor Marin from the village Lopar from the island of Rab.

The ball-point pen was invented by a Croat, Eduard (Slavoljub) Penkala (1871-1922), that it bears his name and is in daily use.

The names of two Croats are on the map of the Moon - names of scientists J. R. Boskovic and A. Mohorovicic.

Two winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry came from Croatia - Lavoslav Ruzicka (1939) and Vladimir Prelog (1975).

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the father of alternative current electricity and technology of wireless communications, after which the unit for magnetic induction is named, was born in Croatia, and that he refused to receive the Nobel prize he had to share with T. A. Edison.

Anthony Maglica, the owner of the well-known company Mag-Lite, comes from Zlarin island from Dalmatia. Mag-Lite flashlights are among the ten most famous American export products, used by astronauts and deep sea explorers, amongst others.


Source: henleyglobal