Dear friends and business partners!

For the 52nd year this May the Floraart international garden festival brings us the best of horticulture. The biggest event of its kind in this part of Europe, it will attract more than 200 Croatian and foreign exhibitors to the exhibition space at Bundek park.

The fact that every year several thousand people visit Floraart speaks of the loyal following that this exceptionally flowery event enjoys. This year there will be a special surprise prepared for visitors in the Grič tunnel.

The 4^th Design Week Zagreb, the largest event in Croatia dedicated to design, will bring us the best of Croatian and international design. The fourth festival will be held from 9 to 14 May at some 50 locations throughout Zagreb. The central locations for Design Week are the Lauba Gallery and the Design Park immediately next to Lauba. The partner country is Austria. Last year Design Week was visited by more than 18,000 people. The announcement of a range of new happenings guarantees that the festival will be well visited this year too.

One of the new items featured in this year’s Design Week is Food Design, just as one of the new items in Zagreb’s tourist offering is the gourmet evening Le Dîner en Blanc. Dinner in White, an international gourmet event which is held in more than 70 cities around the world, will be held in Zagreb for the first time on 20 May. The Croatian metropolis will thus be joining other large cities around the world such as London, Montreal, New York and Tokyo which already hold this event. Socialising, friendship and elegance will be promoted in this way just as they were at the first Le Dîner en Blanc.

In May, in Zagreb at least, summer begins – Summer on Stross. Strossmayerovo šetalište will once again become “Strossmartre”, a city stage on which concerts, exhibitions, creative workshops for children and adults and performances of all kinds are held.

Good fun from morning to late into the night is the motto of the 21^st consecutive international multimedia street festival Cest is d’best. Performers and street entertainers will bring all generations closer through a programme which is open to absolutely everyone to take part.

And on St Mark’s Square from 28 May to 1 October we can once again see the ceremony of the Great Changing of the Guard. The ceremony which shows the daily changing of the sentinel which took place in the time of the Banate of Croatia immediately before the 2^nd World War, starts at noon on the dot with the firing of the Grič cannon from the Lotrščak tower. Members of the Honorary Protective Combat Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia take part: three officers in black and white historical uniforms and 26 soldiers and non-commissioned officers in red and black historical uniforms. The idea for the ceremony was conceived towards the end of 1990 and brought to fruition by 2000, and the Decision on the organization of the Honorary Guard was made by the first Croatian President Dr FranjoTuđman.

So May in the best sense of the word calls us out onto the streets, the streets of the city which holds its annual celebrations on 31 May, the feast day of the city’s patron saint the Mother of God of the Stone Gates.

Welcome!
Martina Bienenfeld
CEO, Zagreb Tourist Board