Location
and land area
Croatia is a Central European and Mediterranean country. It borders
Slovenia in the west, Hungary in the north, Serbia in the east,
and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the south. It has a long coastline
with Italy in the Adriatic Sea.
Croatia covers a land area of 56,691 square kilometres with a population
of about 4.4 million people (2001 census). Over 90% of the population
is Croat (the majority of whom are Roman Catholics), but there are
also Serbian, Bosnian, Hungarian and Italian minorities. The main
population centres are Zagreb, the capital, Osijek in the northwest,
and the ports of Rijeka, and Split in the south.
The
present capital of Croatia is the city of Zagreb
(population about 1,000,000), a very old and beautiful city, mentioned
for the first time in 1094. In former Yugoslavia, Zagreb was a leading
industrial, cultural and scientific center.
Terrain
Croatia has an amazing 5,835km of coastline, 4,057km of which belongs
to islands, cliffs and reefs. There are 1,185 islands in the Adriatic,
but only 66 are populated. The largest island is Krk (near Rijeka)
which has a land area of 462 square km.
Language
The official language is Croatian, which is written in the Latin
script. |
