Old photos of Zagreb

Some more photos of old Zagreb that I actually really like - I always loved old photos, old movies and even old houses (I used to live in one of them) for some reason I always felt a special thrill upon seeing some ancient, leaning and obviously neglected house.

The very first picture here today is Zagreb's famous Ilica street that today looks more or less exactly the same, except that this was taken some 80 years ago so clothes, shops and advertisements are completely different. Buildings are still here but we have lost the street lamps in the meantime. You can walk this particular part of the street and recognise almost everything from this picture.

This is Vlaška street that used to be called "Under the wall" if I am correct. The wall being around our cathedral, which is on the hill at the right. Again, the street looks more or less exactly the same except different shops, advertisements and clothes. What is specially interesting here is the fact that people wore completely different clothes, depending on their social status - citizens wore city clothes, while peasants who obviously came for the market wore their traditional village clothes. There is a woman right in the middle of the road and she looks like a creature from another planet now, nowadays this kind of extremely ornamental scarves and dress can be seen only occasionally on TV but nobody would even think of wearing it in real life.

This is one of the oldest streets in town, right between two hills and once-competitive Gradec and Kaptol, Tkalčićeva street, where I grew up. Long ago, there used to be a little stream right in the middle of this street, later it was centre of "disreputable women" shall we say and never particularly glamorous spot. My earliest memories were about the house little bit further, opposite of park where I used to play, however later we moved in the building with a prominent roof here on the left - this picture was obviously taken decades ago, but this is actually the way I remember it from my childhood when it was pedestrian and completely empty of traffic and bars. Sometime in 1980s it became hot spot for bars and night life and nowadays is kind of curiosity for locals and tourists, though my memories about hungry years spent here are so strong that I always make a point of never visiting this place again. I understand it might look very charming and picturesque to people who come to enjoy their endless cappuccinos from their comfortable homes, but to actually live in this shaky, old houses was not romantic at all.

For the end, the picture that I found in the Internet - this is not Zagreb but some old house somewhere in the world (Belgium? Germany? Netherland?) and I just love this picture. I find it very pretty, beautiful and poetic. I was probably a starving poet who lived in the attic once here. Just a beautiful photo.