Croatia - Travel Europe

Croatia (local: Republika Hrvatska) is a country in the Balkan Peninsula, in the Southeast Europe, with 5,835 km of coast in the Adriatic Sea, including many islands. The capital is Zagreb.

The lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. In the second half of the last century, Yugoslavia was an independent Communist state. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision, the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was returned to Croatia in 1998.

Geography
Croatia controls most land routes from Western Europe to Aegean Sea and Turkish Straits.

Administrative divisions: 20 counties and 1 city.

Terrain: geographically diverse; flat plains along Hungarian border, low mountains and highlands near Adriatic coastline and islands. Highest point: Dinara 1,830 m.

Total area: 56,542 km². Coastline: 5,835 km (mainland 1,777 km, islands 4,058 km).

Climate: Mediterranean and continental; continental climate predominant with hot summers and cold winters; mild winters, dry summers along coast.

Ports and harbors: Dubrovnik, Dugi Rat, Omisalj, Ploce, Pula, Rijeka, Sibenik, Split, Vukovar (inland waterway port on Danube), Zadar.

People
Population: 4.3 million (July 2018 est.).

Religions: Roman Catholic 86.3%, Orthodox 4.4%, Muslim 1.5%, other 1.5%, unspecified 2.5%, not religious or atheist 3.8% (2011 est.).

Ethnic groups: Croat 90.4%, Serb 4.4%, other 4.4% (including Bosniak, Hungarian, Slovene, Czech, and Romani), unspecified 0.8% (2011 est.).

Language: Croatian (official) 95.6%, Serbian 1.2%, other 3% (including Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Albanian), unspecified 0.2% (2011 est.).

Main source: CIA - The World Factbook.