The best Zagreb bars

Founded by famous Zagreb-based journalist and writer Zvonimir Milčec, this cult, bohemian bar-cafe sits seconds away from Zagreb's central square but somehow feels like a timeless escape from the bustle of the city centre. Its small entrance gives way to a reasonably long seated area whose walls are decorated with a constantly-changing display of local art plus pictures and memorials of the late journalist's life and achievements. The premises remains in the hands of his family, who uphold the warm appeal and original ethos of the bar, welcoming anyone from students and artists to young professionals and tourists but, truth be told, nobody would look out of place here. Coffees and teas, craft beers and all typical bar fayre is available, served by friendly and efficient staff who always have some interesting but not intrusive music playing on the house soundsystem. In summer, the outdoor terrace is lively and full, in winter, there are few cosier bars in Zagreb you could hope to be in. A taste of real Zagreb.

The team behind this place are big music enthusiasts and are attached to several major events in the city's calendar. The atmosphere often buzzing, thanks to its mix of backpackers and locals, and if you enjoy cocktails, it's a fabulous place to drink them without breaking the bank.

First and foremost it’s an excellent multi-tap, serving the Soho’s five core beers, a handful of their seasonal specials, and one or two guest brews. It’s also a very good place for lunch or evening munchies, with a menu artfully poised between creative fusion cuisine and grub that goes well with alcohol.

As much a bar as it is an essential hub for alternative culture. The music prgramme is dizzyingly diverse and there's usually something happening in the bar's basement. An upbeat vibe and reasonably priced craft beer on tap (Nova Runda and The Garden) makes Pločnik a reliable choice.

Botaničar is a stylish café, bar and sometimes art gallery near the botanical gardens. One of Zagreb's best-looking venues, the café is like a lookbook for retro furnishings; the well-lit room is scattered with '70s hairpin-legged tables and bright velvet sofas.

Just off the first square as you walk up from the station, the Bacchus Jazz Bar is an ideal place to meet friends, listen to jazz and either have a civilised party evening or get revved up for what's to come.

Just a few doors away from local cultural hub Booksa, Program is run by the same people who brought you the late, lamented Divas, the famously eccentric living-room-gone-bonkers café that arguably set the whole Martićeva trend rolling.

Kulturni Centar Mesnička (“MesničkaCultural Centre”) is a vintage-style living-room bar with a side room devoted to art exhibitions and a live gig space (mostly jazz) in the cellar. 

Noel Bar is arguably Zagreb‘s most aesthetically pleasing place in which to enjoy a relaxing daytime brew. Designed by local architecture studio Penezić and Rogina, it’s a great example of how to make the most of a small space, with a glass-cube bar area enfolded by a tiny L-shaped lounge with room for three or four tables.

The interior preserves the concrete, exposed brick and metal girders of the original factory floor, but clever lighting and comfortable seating ensures that this is far from being a minimalist post-industrial experience.

Compared to Vienna, Budapest or Ljubljana, Zagreb contains a relatively modest number of faux pubs. This is the best of a motley bunch – and the best loved.

Known by all as 'Krolo' after the writer Miroslav Krleža who lived here, this beautiful old wooden bar near the main square gives its many patrons a flavour of pre-1991 Zagreb. Timeless is the word you're looking for.

Opened a decade ago, Sax is one of the best spots in town to see live bands. The stage is big and the venue is spacious and awash in orange with plenty of booths for the partied-out and also plenty of room for dancing. The crowd here is JJ Cale-mellow and half-litres of Tuborg are only 16kn.

The extravagantly decorated, cutesy Finjak is unique enough to attract custom from anywhere in the city centre. A courtyard also helps. The drinks selection is extensive but geared towards daytime consumption: exotic teas, fine coffees, San Servolo and sought-after beers.

Long considered a cult destination on Zagreb’s craft-beer strip of Opatovina, Ro & Do has upped and moved to a new location opposite Britanski trg market. It has lost its snug wood-panelled interior, but gained a much bigger courtyard terrace – which might make it into a key destination as the Zagreb summer takes hold.

Just below the Grič cannon (hence the name), this leafy terrace is a summer evening favourite. When the weather turns cold the enclosed terrace warms the mood. Service is excellent and the clientele cosmopolitan.

A rather tatty-looking café-bar by day, by night the Funk Club is lively indeed. Spontaneous interaction sparks around a horseshoe-shaped bar, while thumping beats come up from the cellar.

Located within staggering distance of Zagreb University’s Student Centre, this cult drinking location is a constant den of smoke and people shouting to be heard above indie-rock tunes. The yard is packed with enough wooden benches to accommodate several hundred at a time.

One of the most popular neighbourhood cafes on the Vlaška strip, Cajt had a reputation for serving speciality beers well before the craft boom took hold, and it can still be replied upon to deliver a vast choice of bottles. Only one minor drawback: Cajt is primarily a daytime meeting place, and can be rather quiet on week-nights.

This venue looks exactly how a music bar should do, with a small stage at one end of a dark but imaginatively lit space and all kinds of musical memorabilia hanging from the walls. Live music from Wednesday through to Saturday, featuring funk, rock covers, and plenty of blues. 

The fashionably black, 1,800-capacity main hall (Veliki pogon, ‘Large Workshop’) has now been augmented by the addition of a much more intimate small hall (Mali pogon), which hosts gigs by local bands and disc-spinning after-parties. Mali pogon also works as a café during the day.

A top choice in the Savska cesta area, this deliberately eccentric bar flaunts its quirky Alice In Wonderland theme. Impressively lit at night, the garden features a painted mural, a checkerboard floor and a white-picket-fence treehouse. They make a mean gin and tonic, which can be served in a teacup, consistent with the theme. Cosy outdoor seating means you can laze around beneath the trees. Sometimes there'll be a DJ entertaining you; better that than the staff's radio choices, which at times stands in sharp contrast to the clever consideration that has gone into this venue.

Part of the (Russian owned) largest chain of Irish themed pubs in the world, the Zagreb franchise of Harat's has a prime position above Dolac market.

Named after one of the most famous trains in the world, during its 100-year existence connecting Paris (and London) with Istanbul, the Orient Express took three routes. The most southerly of these passed through Croatia, with one of the dastardly deeds in Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express' famously taking place just outside Slavonski Brod, where the train also stopped. Themed around one of the train's luxurious carriages, this narrow, centrally-located bar is decked out with a wonderful series of black and white photographs of the glamorous passengers the train carried in its heyday, French-language signage, shiny copper and a bottle-green colour scheme. While the narrow seats in the front part of the bar are more fit for a drink on your own or with a friend, the back of the bar is spacious enough to fit a crowd. Apart from coffee, soft drinks and beer, the drink list offers a wide selection of cocktails, gin, whiskey and other fine spirits.  

This place has been around for a few years and it's a real locals' hang-out. The interior of Alcatraz is crowded with American number plates, beer flags, and mannequins – one of which wears a Mick Jagger mask and seems to be a part of the party. The weekends see it packed with locals, who stop by for a myriad of bottled beers – loads of Belgian speciality brews alongside the excellent local Velebitsko – and the DJs jamming rock and dance tunes. There are also a slew of home-made rakijas (grappas) such as honey, cherry or blackcurrant.

Hidden in an off-street courtyard, this mellow café next to a music shop has quickly built a regular clientele since opening in mid-2011. They take their (free-trade, Ethiopian) coffee very seriously, and serious caffeine addicts will trek halfway across the city to get their regular fix. With poetry readings, jazz in the evenings and art on the walls, it's something of a cult cultural hub into the bargain. The discerning drinks menu marks this spot out as more than just a regular boozer; with Erdinger, Fischers and O'Hara stout on draught.

It simply doesn't get any more local than this. And, you'd be hard-pressed to find a place more central. Located in an alley just metres north and west from the main square, this passage was once used to stable Ban Jelačić's horses. The patio spills into this passage. Inside, it's a real bar – everything is wooden and people are there to drink. There are pictures of old Zagreb strewn about the two rooms and lots of beer – Kilkenny, Paulaner, Erdinger and local drafts – and liquors to keep folks happy.

During the day Kolaž serves coffee to local office workers and lawyers, while by night it fills up with a sophisticated bohemian set with an easy-going straight-gay-whatever sense of social orientation.

Underground, understated and right by the KSET club, Limb is comprised of two tiny colourful rooms and the glass-enclosed terrace with a tree in the middle. A slightly older, artistic crowd hangs out here –  reflecting more than a decade of established patrons.

Svijet Piva is an extremely well-stocked bar, with a multiple, ever-changing guest beer selection and several good bottle options. The indie-leaning soundtrack is often good, and it's a decent choice if you find yourself in the east of the city.

Hollywood Vanity Club has a gilded feel with ornate trimmings and chandeliers. Cocktails with fruit are among the establishment’s specialties: the Mojito, of course, raspberry Martinis and the Amaretto Sour – with fresh oranges and lemons – is a showstopper.

Primarily a roasters and café, Quahwa also has an excellent drinks menu - and a lovely outdoor terrace. Upstairs, the minimalist interior is cool without feeling cold: cushy ‘70s armchairs and hairpin-legged tables are strewn haphazardly about the polished parquet.

This two-room café-bar at the southern end of Savska cesta is far from the cute exercise in nostalgia that you might assume from the name. It does have an old-style domestic-apartment feel, however, with bits of salvaged sideboards and storage cabinets jutting from the walls – each filled with a distinctly homely kind of junk (biscuit tins, toy cars, old books).

Popular with the working and after-work crowd in the daylight hours, Time turns up the music a notch in the evenings and fills up with a predominantly young, style-conscious crew.

Just off Ilica in a passageway lined by some of Zagreb's fancier shops, Velvet displays the kind of flamboyant-but-minimalist interior typical of its co-owner, avant-garde florist Saša Šekoranja.

A warren of quirkily decorated sitting rooms, with mix-and-match furnishings, paintings on the walls, and agreeably low-key lighting. Rakijas are the stars of the show: if there’s a fruit or vegetable that you can make brandy out of then rest assured that it will be on the menu here somewhere.

The café-bar of the Gavella Theatre is something of a Zagreb classic, with its smoky ambience, looks-like-marble-but-isn’t-really interior, and odd mixture of dressed-up theatre-goers and garrulous middle-aged men who just popped in to see if the football was on TV.

Zagreb's rock bar par excellence, Route 66 features live music, pool tables and sought-after beer. Photos of Bill Wyman and someone from AC/DC mark their respective visits, sealing the venue's reputation as a musicians' hangout.

As the only dedicatedly queer venue in the city centre, Hotpot is a major meeting point for the city's gay and lesbian communities. Set in the smoky basement of a discreet building on Petrinjska, the entrance fee costs 20kn (€2.50) and drinks are modestly-priced: special deals on cocktails are chalked up on the boards.

The intimate Masters is located next to the clay courts of the Maksimir Tennis Centre and in a loft bedecked with wooden floors and a tree-house-style bar. Café-bar by day, thumping techno enclave by night, there's nowhere quite like it.

The Sherlock Holmes theme becomes more evident the further in you go, with a wood-panelled corner just beyond the bar looking just like the kind of 19th-century parlour in which Holmes and Watson might have conducted their criminological ruminations. Music is mostly upbeat pop-soul-funk; just don’t forget your pipe and deerstalker.

Zagreb’s off-street courtyards remain a much-underused resource, one of many urban attributes which are talked about with great affection but which rarely seem to take off. Which is why courtyard cafés like Regular Bar are such a good thing, drawing customers into a cute passageway diagonally opposite the Britanski trg market.

Lurking in the upper reaches of Radićeva, Valhalla bills itself as a heavy metal pub but is actually exceedingly mellow, an unpretentious pub-like alternative to the flashy places on nearby Tkalčićeva.

In a passageway just round the corner from the Zagreb Youth Theatre (ZKM), Thalia is a laid-back basement bar which is a good place to party in the wee hours without having to do it with wee teenyboppers. DJs play songs from the 1970s through the 1990s at weekends.

Everyone knows the Apple, where a generation of thirty- and fortysomethings danced and found romance a decade or two ago. This grungy Tuškanac club, set in one of the nicest neighbourhoods in town, has a worn-in feel and still offers the rocking sounds of the 1980s in its modest dance room with multi-coloured spotlights.

Occupying one of the best pitches in central Zagreb, right in the middle of the pedestrianised strip opposite the Grounded Sun sculpture, Vinyl is a bit like a rambling apartment, with five separate rooms on the main floor and a live music and events room downstairs.

Suitably set in an old hi-fi store, this superior music bar is a lively and popular rendezvous for younger, spiky-haired locals and older rockers.

Despite the modest-looking entrance this is a stylish, roomy and bustling place with a long bar running along one side of the room, lots of brass fittings and a fair bit of exposed brickwork. The range of beers is enticing and the events staged here are a lot of fun.

Located on the back-streets near Zagreb's main bus station, its modern, unpretentious decor make clear this is a bar that puts beer before all - bolstered by staff who really know their stuff.

CaffeTin commands a loyal clientele. For many, this unassuming bar is the best hangout in the city. The bar is a strong supporter of live music and in particular jazz.

Smart, but sufficiently dark inside to feel like a groovy nightspot rather than just a café-bar, the New Generation covers up for its rather mainstream choice of bottled beers with a good wine list and cocktail menu. Cover bands, regular DJs and happy hours fill out a varied weekly programme.  

Aside from being a local theatre, the place is also a popular hangout outside of show times. You can get a drink here and enjoy their outdoor area before 11pm. What the concrete courtyard lacks in greenery it more than makes up for with the surrounding murals and interesting types you can meet here.

Zagreb’s cult neighbourhood boozers don’t get more cultish than this: a blues-and-beer bar crammed full of musical mementoes, including a sign reading “Clapton is God”, and a clutch of Fender Stratocasters hanging authoritatively from the wall.