Experience the retro atmosphere!
Coffee served on a small side table, long-forgotten tunes playing quietly on a wooden radio, the smell of the good old times… Such an escape to the past is nowadays enabled by an increasing number of Zagreb’s restaurateurs and café owners, who provide their guests with an original atmosphere for ritual coffee drinking in a “new” retro style.
The charms of the past are greatly appreciated by an increasing number of visitors at some of Zagreb’s new café-bars, in which a prevailing retro-atmosphere is featured. Often, guests frequent these bars for the ambiance alone as they have recognized that even plain coffee tastes better when served in the relaxed environment of times long gone. Nowadays there are more and more such places that promote the, somewhat forgotten, décor of yesteryear. Make sure to visit some of them if you enjoy the spirit of the good old times.
One such place is the “Retro” café bar on Savska Street, where all items have an interesting past. The retro style dominates the interior; shelves contain an array of commercial items from the last century, such as tin cookie boxes, radio sets from our grandmothers’ times, old television sets, and furniture such as chests of drawers, beds and chairs, all of which have been adapted to serve as comfortable bar seating. Wherever one looks, there are interesting souvenirs from the past, which makes ritual coffee drinking more pleasant and quaint.
A similar atmosphere can also be encountered at the Bacchus jazz bar at the square of King Tomislav, which is also dominated by retro interior design. The trademark feature of this café, where guests can enjoy live jazz, is a large old-fashioned bar, packed with old books instead of bottles and glasses. Apart from jazz, the Bacchus organizes poetry evenings on Thursdays.
This atmosphere can be found in many other cafes and watering holes throughout Zagreb, so it is difficult to pick only a few, especially as they are ever evolving in order to provide something new and different to the guests. Our recommendation is to take a stroll across the city, exploring various cafes, in order to be able to choose the one most suited to personal preferences. If your tastes are tied to a particular theme, such as books, the past, comic-book heroes, sea, land, space, or underwater depths, you are guaranteed to find a place for yourself, as Zagreb has it all on offer.