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The railway station is as good a place as any to start an exploration of the city. Tomislavov Trg , opposite the station, is the first in a series of three shady, green squares which form the backbone of the lower town. Taking its name from the tenth-century Croatian king - there's a horseback-statue of him in the centre of the square - Tomislavov Trg's main attraction is the Art Pavilion (Umjetnicki Paviljon; Mon-Sat 11am-7pm, Sun 10am-1pm; 20kn), built in 1898 and now hosting art exhibitions in its gilded stucco and mock-marble interior. Behind the pavilion lies the second of the three squares, Strossmayerov Trg , at the end of which stands another palatial nineteenth-century building, the brick-built Croatian Academy of Science and Arts , founded as the Yugoslavian Academy of Science and Arts by the nineteenth-century Bishop Strossmayer, a Croatian patriot and keen supporter of the Yugoslav ideal. His statue, the work of Croatia's greatest sculptor, Ivan Mestrovic (1883-1962), sits among the trees in front of the building. The Archeological Museum (Arheoloski muzej; Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 10am-1pm; 20kn) lies to the north of here, in the last of the three squares, Trg Nikole Zrinjskog (marked on some maps as "Zrinjevac"); the museum has pieces from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages, including jazzily designed pottery fragments from the fourth century BC Vucedol culture, ancient Roman and Greek artefacts, and a selection of Egyptian antiquities. Walk up from here and you're on Zagreb's main square, Trg bana Jelacica , flanked by cafes, hotels and department stores, and hectic with the whizz of trams and hurrying pedestrians. The statue in the centre of the square is of the nineteenth-century governor of Croatia, ban Josip Jelacic ( ban means "governor"); the tall clock to the east is where half the city seems to agree to meet in the evenings. From here, Jurisiceva runs east towards Trg hrvatskih velikana and the House of Croatian Artists (Dom Hrvatskih Likovnih Umjetnika; Tues-Sat 11am-7pm, Sun 10am-2pm; 10kn), housed in a pavilion designed by Mestrovic in the 1930s and containing displays of contemporary painting and sculpture. There's not much else to tempt you further east from here except for the Maksimir Park , which is Zagreb's largest open space, reachable by tram #4, #7, #11 or #12. The park was founded in 1794, and is a carefully landscaped enclosure containing a belvedere, an eighteenth-century mock Swiss-chalet (now a cafe), and five lakes - the city's zoo (daily 9am-6pm; 20kn) stands on an islet in one of them. Heading west from Trg bana Jelacica, Ilica is the city's main shopping street, running just below the hill of Gradec. A little way down and off to the right, you can take a funicular ( uspinjaca ; daily 6.30am-9pm every 10 min; 2kn) up to Strossmayerovo Setaliste at the top, or cut down via Preradovicev Trg , a small lively square where there's a flower market, to Trg marsala Tita . This is a grandiose open space, centring on the late-nineteenth-century Croatian National Theatre (Hrvatsko narodno kazaliste), a solid ochre-coloured pile behind yet another work by Ivan Mestrovic, the strangely erotic Well of Life . Across the square, the Museum of Arts and Crafts (Muzej za Umjetnost i Obrt; Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 10am-1pm; 20kn) boasts an impressive display of furniture, ceramics, clothes and textiles from the Renaissance to the present day. On the southern side of the square, on Trg Ivana Mazuranica, the Ethnographic Museum (Etnografski muzej; Tues-Thurs 10am-6pm, Fri-Sun 10am-1pm; 15kn) has a collection of costumes from every corner of the country, as well as an engaging heap of artefacts brought back from the South Pacific, Asia and Africa by intrepid Croatian explorers. A couple of minutes west, on Rooseveltov Trg, lies Zagreb's most prestigious art collection, the Mimara Museum (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 10am-2pm; 20kn; www.mimara.hr ), housing the art and archeological collection of one Ante Topic Mimara, a native of Zagreb who spent much of his life in Austria. On the ground floor there are exhibits of ancient glass from Egypt, Greece, Syria and the Roman Empire, seventeenth- and nineteenth-century oriental carpets, and Chinese art from the Shang through to the Song dynasty. Upstairs, there's a collection of European paintings. Most periods of art are covered, although a degree of controversy surrounds the attributions: most works are labelled "school of?" or "workshop of?" in order to keep the art experts happy.
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