Sacred spaces of the Upper Town

The tour begins with a visit to the Stone Gate, the historic entrance to Gradec, whose chapel still serves as a place of pronounced sacred symbolism. Participants will explore notable examples of sacred architecture, such as the Baroque-period Jesuit Church of St. Catherine and the historicist Greek Catholic Church of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. The significant 19th-century influence on the city’s development will be illustrated through this church, originally built in 1681 for seminary novices and Greek Catholic believers, mostly from Žumberak, the Uskoks, and clerics living in Zagreb and its surroundings. However, a fire in 1766 destroyed most church records, making it difficult to determine precisely how long the Greek Catholic church has existed in the Upper Town. The current church was built during the episcopate of Bishop Ilija Hranilović in 1886, when a new church dedicated to Sts. Cyril and Methodius were erected on the site of the former Church of St. Basil (1831). The tour will also examine the influence of early 20th-century spatial ideas on the design of public urban spaces through a visit to Jesuit Square, designed by prominent Croatian modernist architects Viktor Kovačić and Hugo Erlich, with their Zakmardi Stairs project serving as the final stop of the tour.