Back in 2022, I started a project with the goal of photographing every street, square, and park in Zagreb. I’ve been photographing Zagreb for over 15 years, and I needed a new challenge. At that time, I had several ongoing projects – some still active – but Mapping Zagreb was in a different league. I knew this project would last for years, but it was exciting knowing I was gradually gathering photos of the entire city.
In the same post from 2024, I wrote: “When I was younger (much younger), I used to play computer games, and one of my favorite genres were strategy games – specifically, I LOVED Age of Empires. You might be wondering, what does that have to do with this project? Well, in Age of Empires, you’d develop your skills, care for your village/town/kingdom, and slowly expand across the map. When I open my Google Maps, where I mark the parts of the city I’ve photographed, it feels like I’m conquering the map just as I once did in Age of Empires. The biggest difference is my weapon – I use only my camera.” If you check the screenshot above, you’ll know why does this feels the same as conquering the map in AOE.
Zagreb is divided into city quarters (gradska četvrt), which are further divided into local committees (mjesni odbor). Below is a list of the top 10 most photographed city quarters:
Data from the post I published in October 28th, 2024 + the new numbers
- Trnje – 252 locations photographed
- Donja Dubrava – 173 locations photographed + 94 locations in 2025
- Donji grad – 170 locations photographed
- Trešnjevka – Sjever – 152 locations photographed + 45 locations in 2025
- Peščenica – Žitnjak – 122 locations photographed
- Trešnjevka – Jug – 83 locations photographed + 191 locations in 2025
- Novi Zagreb – Istok – 60 locations photographed
- Maksimir – 51 locations photographed + 74 locations in 2025
- Gornja Dubrava – 46 locations photographed + 135 locations in 2025
- Novi Zagreb – Zapad – 17 locations photographed + 23 locations in 2025
Updated list for each year:
- 2022 – 463 locations (3,544 photos)
- 2023 – 76 locations (691 photos)
- 2024 – 587 locations (5,275 photos)
- 2025 – 562 locations (4,636 photos)
What about the new feature?
Well, now there are two ways to explore the photos from the Mapping of Zagreb project. The first one is through the Arhivio system, which you can see by clicking here. Arhivio is a content management tool that I created by myself. The idea is to search photos using keywords you enter or suggested keywords in the menu. But that’s kind of old news because I built it over a year ago – still useful, though.
The new feature is built on the OpenStreetMap foundation. I’ve always wanted to build something like that — where you can scroll around the map and explore Zagreb in a more interactive way.
The problem was that it would took too long to enter a large amount of data (name of the street, geo location of the street, image of the street and the link to the archive – all of that for every street on the map), but with the help of some scripts and AI tools, I managed to build an app that does that for me after every photoshoot for this project. To make a long story short, I’ve built an app that helps me organize photos after each photoshoot, as well as update both Arhivio Mapping of Zagreb and OpenStreetMap Mapping of Zagreb. Mapping of Zagreb x OpenStreetMap is still work in progress, but it is already cool feature.
Explore the new feature – Mapping of Zagreb with OpenStreetMap – here.
I’m mentioning this because the project will be taking a short break. My plan is to continue photographing this project once spring returns— when the city’s colors and atmosphere start to have some life in itself after the winter. Over the next few weeks, Zagreb will be covered in Christmas decorations, and most trees will lose their leaves, which isn’t ideal for this kind of work. Because of that, the project will stay on pause until spring. There’s still a slight chance I’ll photograph one or two more local committees by the end of 2025, but that’s uncertain for now.
As always, feel free to check out fotografijezagreba.hr, where you’ll find all these photos and over 110,000 other photos of Zagreb.
