This year is another one in a series of years when the summer in the City of Zagreb will be filled with art and culture. To announce that, a press conference was held in the centre of the city last week, where the program for the Zagrebačko kulturno ljeto (ZgKUL, Zagreb Summer of Culture) was presented, zagreb.info writes.
Events that are part of ZgKUL will be held all over the city: on Kralj Tomislav Square, in Upper Town, as well as in Novi Zagreb, and the most beautiful open-air and standard stages of the city will offer the best and the most attractive pieces of culture in Zagreb. More than two thousand artists from Zagreb, the rest of Croatia and abroad will be participating in those events, which will include music, movies, theatre, exhibitions, traditional arts and many other events.
Milana Vuković Runjić, head of the Zagreb department of culture said at the press conference that Zagreb has done its best trying to keep everyone from going to the seaside. She said that not many cities in the world offer that much culture during the summer. She highlighted the fact that this year, Zagreb is ”going back” to the Sava river, where, back in 1926, Miss Sava was selected.
One of the first programs was the Zagreb Classic Festival, held on Kralj Tomislav Square this weekend. The musicians were on the stage, and the people attending were sitting on the grass on one of the nicest squares in Zagreb, listening to the Fiesta Latina program performed by Croatian Radiotelevison orchestras with guests such as Los Caballeros and the band Cubismo. The program on Kralj Tomislav Square will continue with performances by Tonči Huljić, the Moscow Cadet Choir, the Croatian Army’s Brass Band, the Croatian National Theatre’s Opera and Ballet, LADO, and many others.
Marina Bienenfeld, the director of the Zagreb Tourist Board said that the total number of cultural events during Zagreb summer will be over 300! Some programs that are already well-known and popular, like Dvorišta, Crossover Festival on Ribnjak, and Summers by Matoš in Upper town will continue, and new, similar programs will be started this year. We’ve already written about the Tuškanac summer stage, and Summer on the Museum of Contemporary Arts’ Roof will see the unique combination of music, film and literature, and the Atrium of the Klovićevi Dvori will host a rich classical musical experience.
And of course, it’s already become a tradition for Zagreb summers to start with the InMusic festival, which starts today. One of the staples of the festival, which is always held in late June in Zagreb, is that it almost always rains, so seeing the weather forecast which says that this year the festival might, in fact, be dry (but only as far as the weather is concerned!) might come as a shock to regular visitors, who say that they enjoy the mud on Jarun as a part of the experience.
