The official and common language, Croatian, is a South Slavic language, using the Latin alphabet.
Croatia remained under Hapsburg rule until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Napoleon conquered Croatia in 1809.
The Adriatic islands contain over 13 centuries of Croatian architectural history.
The 1991–1995 war in Croatia had previously displaced large parts of the population and increased emigration.
Offshore Croatia consists of over one thousand islands varying in size.
A national Banovina of Croatia was created in 1939 out of the two banates, as well as parts of the Zeta, Vrbas Banovina, Drina Banovina and Danube banates.
Croatia is rich in mineral resources, which include petroleum, some coal, bauxite, low-grade iron ore, calcium, natural asphalt, silica, mica, clays, salt, and hydropower.
The Roman Catholic Church was instrumental in the founding of many educational facilities in Croatia.
The most famous Croatian sculptor is Ivan Mestrovic (1883-1962), who created the wooden Madonna and Child.
Croatia’s military, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia, consists of ground forces, naval forces, and air and air defense forces.
The politics of Croatia take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, with a pluriform multi-party system.
In 1934, King Aleksandar was assassinated in Marseilles by a coalition of two radical groups: the Croatian Ustaљe and the Macedonian pro-Bulgarian VMORO.
In 1929, King Alexander of Yugoslavia proclaimed a dictatorship and imposed a new constitution which, among other things, made Croatia part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
One of Croatia’s best Roman architectural remains is Diocletian's Palace, built in Split, by the emperor Diocletian between the third and the fourth century C.E.
Zagreb is the cultural, scientific, economic and governmental center of the Republic of Croatia.
Croatia shares land borders with Slovenia and Hungary on the north, Serbia on the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina on the south and east, and Montenegro on the south.
Croatia has a three-tiered judicial system, consisting of the Supreme Court, county courts, and municipal courts, and is independent of the executive and the legislature.
In an economy traditionally based on agriculture and livestock, peasants comprised more than half of the Croatian population until after World War II.
Croatians stand close to one another and talk loudly, and strangers stare openly at one another.
The Church continues to maintain numerous seminaries and theological faculties in the country, as well as the Pontifical Croatian College of Saint Jerome for Croatian students in Rome.
Croatian and related Southern Slav languages are modern forms of the languages of the Slavic peoples who migrated into the region around 500 C.E.
Croatian duke Trpimir I (845–864), founder of the Trpimirovi? dynasty, fought successfully against the Bulgarians, and expanded his state in east to the Drava River.
The Drava and the Sava flow from the Pannonian Plain into the Danube, which forms part of Croatia’s eastern border with Serbia.
The novelist, playwright and poet Miroslav Krleza is known for his works The Return of Philip Latinowicz (1932) and the multi-volume Banners (1963-1965), which concerns Croatian life at the turn of the century.
Tudman’s party wanted more independence for Croatia, contrary to the wishes of ethnic Serbs in the republic and official politics in Belgrade.
Croatian coastal towns contain a mixture of Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque architecture.
The first native Croatian ruler recognized by a pope was duke Branimir, whom Pope John VIII called dux Chroatorum in 879.
Inflation and unemployment rose and the Croatian kuna fell, prompting the national bank to tighten fiscal policy.
Forebears of Croatia's Slav population migrated into the Balkans and along the Dalmatian coast in the sixth century, displacing or absorbing the Illyrians.
Croatian and Jewish families are likely to have high status, while Albanians are at the bottom of the social system, and Gypsies are outside it.
The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) was formed, and Franjo Tu?man, a former general in Tito's World War II anti-fascist Yugoslav Partisan movement, rose to power.
The first movement peaked at around 550,000 on the Croatian side; the second movement peaked at around 200,000 on the Serbian side.
Croatia occupies approximately 21,825 square miles (56,540 square kilometers), or is slightly smaller than West Virginia in the United States.
Croatia, as a communist republic, became part of the six-part Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1945, which was run by Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
Profits from Croatian industry were used to develop poorer regions in the former Yugoslavia.
The Croatian Peasant Party under Stjepan Radi? boycotted the government of the Serbian Radical People's Party.
The mediжval Croatian kingdom reached its peak during the reign of King Petar Kreљimir IV (1058–1074).
The area known as Croatia has been inhabited ever since the Stone Age.
The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb is a learned society promoting language, culture, and science from its first conception in 1836.
A communist anti-fascist Partisan movement emerged in Croatia early in 1941, under the command of Croat-Slovene Josip Broz Tito.
The Yugoslav National Army (JNA) attacked Croatian cities, notably Vukovar and Dubrovnik.
The Serbian-Croatian Dragiљa Cvetkovi?-Vlatko Ma?ek government that came to power moved closer to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the period of 1935-1941.
Croatian and Serbian forms of the language have different dialects, and different alphabets.
The president of the Supreme Court is elected for a four-year term by the Croatian Parliament at the proposal of the president.
Illyria was a sovereign state until the Romans conquered it in 168 B.C.E., and organized the land into the Roman province of Illyricum, which encompassed most of modern Croatia.
A large body of books bears witness to the high level of gastronomic culture in Croatia, such as the Gazophylacium by Belostenec, a Latin-Kajkavian dictionary dating from 1740 that preceded a similar French dictionary.
Croatian romantic nationalism emerged in mid-nineteenth century to counteract the apparent Germanization and Magyarization of Croatia.
The Yugoslav People's Army, mainly consisting of Serbs, blocked intervention by Croatian police.
The movement of Croatian Naive Art, or self-taught artists, is Croatia's twentieth century contribution to the world of fine arts.
The Kupa flows east along the Slovenian border into central Croatia, to join the Sava.
Privatization under the new Croatian Government had barely begun when war broke out.
Before the dissolution of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Republic of Croatia, after Slovenia, was the most prosperous and industrialized area, with a per capita output perhaps one-third above the Yugoslav average.
The census of 1991 was the last one held before the war in Croatia, marked by ethnic conflict between Serbs and Croats.
Croatia's unsatisfactory performance implementing democratic reforms in 1998 raised questions about the ruling party's commitment to basic democratic principles.
Improvements to London's overground and underground rail network, including large scale electrification were progressively carried out.
Croatian autonomy was restored in 1868 with the Hungarian–Croatian Settlement.
The Yugoslav People's Army retreated from Croatia into Bosnia and Herzegovina where the Bosnian War was just about to start.
The Croatian Parliament cut remaining ties with Yugoslavia on October 8, 1991.
A crisis in Kosovo and, in 1986, the emergence of Slobodan Miloљevi? in Serbia provoked a negative reaction in Croatia and Slovenia.
After a lifetime of wilderness adventures facing death on icy glaciers and remote cliffs, John Muir died quietly in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914 after contracting pneumonia.
During 1992 and 1993, Croatia handled an estimated 700,000 refugees from Bosnia, mainly Bosnian Muslims.
The population of Croatia, estimated at 4,555,000 in 2007, has been stagnating over the last decade.
From 1945 to 1991, the official language was Serbo-Croatian, although Croats often referred to their language as Croato-Serbian.
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia (Republika Hrvatska), is a strategically important country at the crossroads of the Mediterranean and Central Europe.
The highest point is Dinara, one of the more prominent mountains located on the border of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is 6000 feet (1830 meters).
Meanwhile, a Serbian royalist guerrilla group called ?etnici (Chetnik) was formed to displace Croats from parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to create a supposedly ethnically "pure" Serb society.
Croatia has had an uneven record in these areas between 1996 and 1999 during the right-wing HDZ government, inhibiting its relations with European Union and the U.S.
The ZAVNOH, the state anti-fascist council of people's liberation of Croatia, functioned since 1944 and formed an interim civil government.
Croatia also has a place in the history of clothing as the origin of the necktie (cravat).
The SDP-led government slowly relinquished control over public media companies and did not interfere with freedom of speech and independent media, though it didn't complete the process of making Croatian Radiotelevision independent.
Croatia is in the process of rapidly modernizing and expanding its sporting arenas, as it prepares to host the 2009 World Men's Handball Championship.
Ethnic Serbs in Croatian-dominated parts of Croatia were similarly forced out by the Croatian army and irregular forces.
A new class of banjo players emerged, including middle- and upper-middle-class ladies.
Croatia has a strong tradition of classical music, and Ivo Pogorelich is an internationally known concert pianist.
Following the revolutions of 1848 in Habsburg areas, and the creation of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, Croatia lost its domestic autonomy, despite the contributions of its ban Josip Jela?i? in quenching the Hungarian rebellion.
The first King of Croatia, Tomislav (910–928) of the Trpimirovi? dynasty, was crowned in 925.
The Croatian government (vlada) is headed by the prime minister who has two deputy prime ministers and 14 ministers in charge of particular sectors of activity.
Singing Croatian songs said to be nationalistic could lead to a jail term.
The Axis powers’ occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941 allowed the Croatian radical right Ustaљe to come into power, forming the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), led by Ante Paveli?.
Trends after 1965, however, led to the Croatian Spring of 1970–1971, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and more Croatian autonomy.
Croatian dances are physically demanding, as dancers sing while they perform brisk and lively movements.
After World War I, Croatia joined other southern Slavs in the First Yugoslavia.
The Croatian military budget was approximately $1.1-billion in 1997 (a little more than 5 percent of GDP), but it has since been reduced significantly to 2 percent of GDP in 2007.
Armed conflict in Croatia remained intermittent and mostly on a small scale until 1995.
The name of Croatia (Croatian: Hrvatska) derives from Medieval Latin Croātia, itself a derivation of the native ethnonym, earlier Xъrvatъ and modern-day Croatian: Hrvat.
The countries established diplomatic relations on 25 May 1992. Croatia has an embassy in Moscow and an honorary consulate in Kaliningrad. Russia has an embassy in Zagreb. While geographically not close, Croatia and Russia are both Slavic countries and thus share cultural heritage.
The Republic of Croatia is administratively organised into twenty counties, and is also traditionally divided into four historical and cultural regions: Croatia proper, Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Istria. These are further divided into other, smaller regions.
The dialing code for the country is 385 and the top level internet domain for Croatian sites is .hr. Croatia shares land borders with 6 countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Italy.May 8, 2017
Central Croatia consists of the mountainous Dinara Region, which is covered with large forests and has an alpine climate. The Adriatic coast enjoys a Mediterranean climate of cool, rainy winters and hot, dry summers.
Winters get cold, with the mean temperature in January ranging from 0°C to -2°C. In July, the mean is approximately 22°C although strong heat waves have become more frequent. The mountains of Croatia such as the Velebit range and Medvednica (near Zagreb) are cooler and get more precipitation.
The beginning of September enjoys a whopping 13+ hours of sunlight. Expect to take advantage of a daily average temperature of 23°C (74°F), highs of 26°C (80°F) and lows of 19°C (67°F). By the middle of the month, the temperature drops rapidly to an average of 20°C (69°F), highs of 24°C (76°F) and lows of 17°C (63°F).
At the beginning of October, Dubrovnik is relatively warm, with over eleven hours of sunlight daily and averages of 19°C (67°F), highs of 22°C (72°F) and lows of 15°C (60°F). By the middle of the month, the temperature drops to an average of 17°C (63°F), highs of 20°C (68°F) and lows of 13°C (56°F).
August in Dubrovnik is extremely hot and dry, and typically the hottest month of the year. As in July, average daily temperatures reach around 28°C (about 82°F) and only go as low as 16°C (about 62°F). There is, on average, 14 and half daily hours of sunshine.