Destination Croatia

Background

The lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the close of World War I. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. 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.

Area

• Total: 56,542 sq km
• Land: 56,414 sq km
• Water: 128 sq km

Area - comparative

• Slightly smaller than West Virginia

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

Terrain

• Geographically diverse; flat plains along Hungarian border, low mountains and highlands near Adriatic coastline and islands

Population

• 4,494,749 (July 2006 est.)

Capital

• Zagreb

Nationality

• noun: Croat(s), Croatian(s)
• adjective: Croatian

Languages

• Croatian 96.1%, Serbian 1%, other and undesignated 2.9% (including Italian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and German) (2001 census)

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