December the 23rd, 2025 – Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in Zagreb will instantly be familiar with the name Mamutica – Croatia’s largest residential building with as many as 5,000 residents living in it.
As Putni kofer writes, across the globe, cities have long since begun to expand in height, due to their large population and small surface area. The oldest skyscrapers in the world were built 500 years ago, in the middle of the desert, in the city of Shibam in Yemen. Tall residential and commercial buildings are now the symbol of the most famous cities, and there’s no shortage of them across Croatia either. Mamutica is Croatia’s largest residential building by far. You’ll find it in Novi Zagreb in the Travno neighbourhood, and it’s home to an incredible 5,000 residents.
mamutica – zagreb’s very own mammoth
Mamutica is 240 metres long, 60 metres tall, and the highest parts have 19 inhabited floors. Its interior boasts 1,169 apartments, with a population of about 5,000 people. This means that Mamutica, Croatia’s largest residential building, has more inhabitants than some entire Croatian cities. Among them are Skradin, Nin, Hvar, Obrovac, Hrvatska Kostajnica… A total of 18 Croatian cities actually have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, and therefore fewer than this sprawling, somewhat imposing brutalist construction in Zagreb has.
There are 9 entrances to the building, 6 in the so-called “big” and three in the “small” Mamutica. There are also 256 garages and 24 business premises. The skyscraper was built in 1974 according to a project by Professor Đuro Mirković and Nevenka Postružnik, and was constructed by Industrogradnja.
a city within a city
The Mamutica plateau is the central place of the building’s social life, home to a number of establishments with amenities that are within easy reach of residents, such as a bank, library, fruit shop, butcher shop, a café and more. Over time, the building has become a kind of symbol of the instantly recognisable architecture of that time, but the quality of the apartments and amenities within the building is clearly excellent regardless of the passage of time and style because people rarely move out.
The apartments range in size from 46 to 130 square metres, and last year the Bauštela.hr portal reported the experiences of real estate agencies who say that, despite the large number of apartments, those in Mamutica are rarely found on the market.
“There are six types of apartments within Mamutica in total, from one-bedroom to five-bedroom, spanning areas of 40.45, 60.65, 70.50, 85.50, 120 and 130 square metres. There are only a few of the largest,” Bauštela.hr reported.
To some, the gigantic Mamutica building may seem ugly, cold and intimidating, but it remains a favourite among its residents and few decide to leave it. Its plateau is one of the places with the most public and commercial facilities in a single small area in all of Novi Zagreb. It is, in a sense, a city within a city – all on its own.
