arthistoricum.net

The city of Zagreb was hit by two devastating earthquakes in March and December of 2020, in which the buildings in the historic urban centre suffered the greatest damage. At the same time, the historical architecture of the Lower Town Zagreb is currently most threatened by further devastation and decay. The reconstruction of the Lower City after the earthquake has faced us with the problems resulting from insufficient research and valorization of the architectural heritage, poor knowledge about individual architectural commissions and projects, as well as the problems related to defining which architects and master builders were authors of particular designs. Even though Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, the current devastated appearance of the Lower City stays in contrast to the idea of a national metropolis. The current state of its architectural heritage does not represent the culture of the epoch during which it was created, but rather a very specific local way of dealing with it. This can be discussed as a loss of "historicity".