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The Vukovar water tower, 2010. Heavily damaged in the battle, the tower has been preserved as a symbol of the conflict.
The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of Vukovar in eastern Croatia by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various paramilitary forces from Serbia, between August and November 1991. Before the Croatian War of Independence the Baroque town was a prosperous, mixed community of Croats, Serbs and other ethnic groups. As Yugoslavia began to break up, Serbia's President Slobodan Milošević and Croatia's President Franjo Tuđman began pursuing nationalist politics. In 1990, an armed insurrection was started by Croatian Serb militias, supported by the Serbian government and paramilitary groups, who seized control of Serb-populated areas of Croatia. The JNA began to intervene in favour of the rebellion, and conflict broke out in the eastern Croatian region of Slavonia in May 1991. In August, the JNA launched a full-scale attack against Croatian-held territory in eastern Slavonia, including Vukovar.
Vukovar was defended by around 1,800 lightly armed soldiers of the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) and civilian volunteers, against as many as 36,000 JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries equipped with heavy armour and artillery. During the battle, shells and rockets were fired into the town at a rate of up to 12,000 a day. At the time, it was the fiercest and most protracted battle seen in Europe since 1945, and Vukovar was the first major European town to be entirely destroyed since the Second World War. When Vukovar fell on 18 November 1991, several hundred soldiers and civilians were massacred by Serb forces and at least 20,000 inhabitants were expelled. Overall, around 3,000 people died during the battle. Most of Vukovar was ethnically cleansed of its non-Serb population and became part of the self-declared proto-state known as the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Several Serb military and political officials, including Milošević, were later indicted and in some cases jailed for war crimes committed during and after the battle. (Full article...)
Image 32Marko Marulić (18 August 1450 – 5 January 1524), Croatian poet, lawyer, judge, and Renaissance humanist who coined the term "psychology". He is the national poet of Croatia. (from Croatia)
Image 36One of the seats of 14th-century magnate Paul Šubić, in Bribir. Paul held the hereditary titles of the Ban of Croatia and Lord of Bosnia. Croatian historians sometimes refer to Paul as "the uncrowned king of Croatia". (from History of Croatia)
Image 41Croatian borders similar to those established with the Peace of Karlowitz in 1699. Although the peace treaty meant relief from Ottoman pressure, Croatia lost the compactness of its territory. (from History of Croatia)
Image 42The assassination of Croatian MPs in the National Assembly in Belgrade was one of the events which greatly damaged relations between Serbs and Croats in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. (from History of Croatia)
Image 67A map of 10th-century Croatian counties (županije), as they were mentioned in De Administrando Imperio. The counties marked in blue represent the territories governed by the Croatian Ban. (from History of Croatia)
Image 68Traditional Croatian musicians playing violins (from Culture of Croatia)
Image 69Ban Josip Jelačić at the opening of the first Croatian civic Parliament (Sabor) whose deputies were elected on 5 June 1848. In earlier Sabors, members represented feudal estates rather than citizens. The Croatian tricolor flag can also be seen in the background. Dragutin Weingärtner, 1885. (from History of Croatia)
Image 74The 1835 issue of the magazine Danicza, with lyrics of what would later become the Croatian national anthem "Lijepa naša domovino" ("Our Beautiful Homeland"). (from History of Croatia)
Image 76"Remnants of the Remnants" (Reliquiae Reliquiarum), shown on this map in yellow, represent the territory under the jurisdiction of Croatian-Slavonian Sabor at the height of the Ottoman advance (from History of Croatia)
Image 81A border marking of Illyrian Provinces on Sava river shores in modern-day Zagreb. (from History of Croatia)
Image 82Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac with the Croatian communist leader Vladimir Bakarić at the celebration of May Day, shortly before Stepinac was arrested and convicted by the communists (from Croatia)
Image 85Ban Josip Jelačić at the opening of the first modern Croatian Parliament (Sabor), June 5, 1848. The Croatian tricolour flag can be seen in the background. (from Croatia)
Josipović entered politics as a member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ), and played a key role in the democratic transformation of the League of Communists of Croatia (SKH) into the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as the author of its first statute. He left politics in 1994, but returned in 2003, winning a seat in the Croatian Parliament running as an independent candidate on the SDP party list. He won re-election to parliament as a member of the SDP in 2007. In addition to politics, Josipović has also worked as a university professor, legal expert, musician and composer, and holds a Ph.D. in Law and advanced degrees in music composition. (Full article...)
Zaprešić (pronounced[zâːpreʃitɕ]) is a town in Hrvatsko Zagorje, Zagreb County in Croatia. It has a population of 19,644 inhabitants in the town proper, with 25,223 in the administrative area. The town's metropolitan area, which encompasses the seven neighbouring municipalities, has a population of 54,640. Zaprešić is the third-largest, and most densely populated town of the county. It is located northwest of the Croatian capital Zagreb, and near the Slovenian border. It is centered on plains north of the Sava River, and is bordered by Medvednica Mountain to the east, and the Marija Gorica Hills to the west.
The first human settlement in, and near Zaprešić dates from the Neolithic, and several Roman roads were constructed in the area. Vicinity to transport corridors is also reflected in the meaning of the name (za, 'near or behind', prešće 'crossing'). The first records of the settlement date from 1474. (although, some authors claim that the church of Saint Peter in Zaprešić could have been mentioned in a document supposedly written in 1334). In the late medieval and early modern times, the village history includes being a part of a feudal estate Susedgrad, as well of being a part of Brdovec parish. (Full article...)
The Theatre moved to its current building in 1895. The building itself was the project of famed Viennese architects Ferdinand Fellner and Herman Helmer, whose firm had built several theatres in Vienna.