Looking back at traditional Zagreb, here’s a wonderful photo of a Zagreb lamplighter by photographer Alen Ferina.
The first 364 street lamps in Zagreb were lit on October 31, 1863 at 7 p.m. Even though during time their number increased, after the First World War gas lamps were replaced with electric lamps.
Nowadays there are only 241 gas street lamps left and they became a famous touristic attraction over time. Because of the touristic boom of Croatia’s capital, the gaswork directorate came up with an idea to make lamplighters a touristic attraction a couple of years ago. They were given special uniforms and forbidden from doing their job on motorcycles. Lamplighters now have to light up the entire Upper City on foot, which actually got them in pretty good shape. Little did they know that their profession will become so famous and they would be followed by hordes of tourists just to take a photo with them, or to light up lamps by themselves with the help of the lamplighter’s long telescopic stick.
Zagreb is now one of the few European cities with fully functional gas lamps that give a special atmosphere to the Upper City, and it’s all thanks to these guys who do their job come rain or shine.
Click here to check out his work to check out his work.
Alen is a talented professional photographer from Zagreb who’s been doing urban, rural and andscape photography for over 20 years.
For more great photos of Zagreb, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy, visit his homepage here.
