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The story of Medvedgrad begins in 1242, when the Mongols swept into Croatia, laying waste to the settlements of Gradec and Kaptol. King Béla IV of Hungary and Croatia narrowly escaped capture, and once the invaders had withdrawn, it became clear that Zagreb needed a powerful fortress to protect the bishop, Kaptol and the Church’s treasures from any future attacks.

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Construction of Medvedgrad began between 1249 and 1254 under the direction of Philip, Bishop of Zagreb, with the support of Pope Innocent IV and King Béla IV. Perched almost 600 metres above sea level on the slopes of Mount Medvednica, the fortress commanded the approaches to Zagreb as well as the important routes leading towards Slavonia and Turopolje.

Few medieval castles changed hands as often as Medvedgrad. Over the course of more than three centuries, it is believed to have had around 150 owners. Among them were the Bishops of Zagreb, King Béla IV, Sigismund of Luxembourg, Matthias Corvinus, and the powerful noble families of Babonić, Cilli (Celje), Zrinski and Erdődy.

These frequent transfers of ownership explain why Medvedgrad appears so regularly in medieval charters and political disputes.

The Legend of the Black Queen

No story about Medvedgrad is more famous than that of the Black Queen.

The legend is linked to Barbara of Cilli, the wife of Sigismund of Luxembourg. Yet there is no historical evidence that Barbara ever lived at Medvedgrad or that she was known as the Black Queen. The legendary figure emerged over centuries as the real queen became intertwined with local folklore passed down from generation to generation.

According to the legend, the Black Queen was extraordinarily wealthy, strikingly beautiful and notoriously cruel. The people living beneath Mount Medvednica feared her, believing she imposed crushing taxes and mercilessly punished anyone who challenged her authority. Stories claimed that she practised witchcraft, conversed with ravens and concealed immense riches in the underground chambers of Medvedgrad.

The best-known tale recounts her final escape. As enemy forces surrounded the fortress, the Black Queen refused to surrender either herself or her treasure. She ordered her riches to be loaded onto a great black raven—or, in another version of the story, into a black carriage drawn by devils. Just as she attempted to flee, the earth opened beneath her, swallowing both the Queen and her treasure.

To this day, many believe that the treasure still lies hidden somewhere beneath Medvedgrad.

Legend also says that on stormy nights her ghost walks along the ancient walls, accompanied by the rattling of chains and the harsh cries of ravens. Only someone with a completely pure heart, it is said, will ever be able to discover her hidden treasure.

The legend of the Black Queen has become inseparable from Medvedgrad itself and remains one of the fortress’s most enduring symbols.

The Decline and Revival of Medvedgrad

As the Ottoman threat intensified, Medvedgrad was strengthened and refortified in 1487 and again in 1574. However, the devastating earthquake of 1590 left the fortress badly damaged. Its owners eventually moved to a more comfortable residence in nearby Šestine, and Medvedgrad was gradually abandoned. By the seventeenth century, it was already being described as a ruin.

The fortress remained in private ownership until the end of the Second World War, when the Kulmer family lost possession and Medvedgrad became state property. Systematic archaeological excavations and restoration work began in 1979, transforming the site into one of the best-preserved medieval fortresses in Croatia.

Medvedgrad Still Watches Over Zagreb

Just below the fortress’s southern defensive tower stands the Altar of the Homeland, created in 1994 by the Croatian sculptor Kuzma Kovačić.

The monument honours all Croatian defenders who gave their lives during the Croatian War of Independence. It is built from blocks of stone gathered from different parts of Croatia, symbolising the country’s diverse regions, while an eternal flame burns at its heart.

Its location is no coincidence. For almost eight centuries Medvedgrad has watched over Zagreb from its commanding position above the city. The monument therefore creates a powerful symbolic link between Croatia’s medieval heritage and the modern Croatian state.

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Imagine eighteenth-century Zagreb. As you walk through the dark, narrow streets of Gradec, it is not only cats that watch you from the rooftops, but fear itself. In those days, when “eyes seemed to grow in the darkness”, every unusual sound or a neighbour’s suspicious glance could become a death sentence.

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Even today, the roof of the Kamenita Vrata (Stone Gate) tower bears a reminder of those beliefs – a steel mace mounted with the intention of catching a witch’s cloak as she swept past on her broomstick in low flight.

According to popular belief and the accusations recorded in court, witches were thought to possess a wide range of powers that enabled them to influence everyday life. It was believed that they could transform themselves into animals, most commonly cats, flies, or birds such as crows and ravens, allowing them to spy on people unnoticed. They were also said to control the weather, conjuring hailstorms and tempests that destroyed crops while riding upon black clouds. Witches were reputed to brew potions capable of inspiring love or provoking hatred.

Official witch persecutions in Zagreb began in the fourteenth century, and the oldest surviving court record of a witchcraft trial dates from 1360. Although isolated cases had appeared earlier, systematic persecution and mass hysteria developed over several key periods.

The first recorded trial in Gradec took place in 1360 against Alice and Margaret. At that time, the accused still had the right to prove their innocence through the sworn testimony of jurors and were not subjected to torture. By the end of the fifteenth century, however, the publication of the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (1484) and the notorious manual Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486) made persecutions across Europe – including those in Zagreb – increasingly brutal and dependent upon systematic torture.

Following the Church Synod of Trnava in 1611, which ordered regular preaching against witchcraft, the number of trials in Zagreb and the surrounding region rose dramatically. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries marked the height of the persecutions. Particularly infamous were city judges and captains such as Đuro Porta and Ivan Khayll, who between 1698 and 1705 conducted dozens of trials without delivering a single acquittal. Over the centuries, around 250 official witch trials were recorded in Zagreb (and possibly even more, according to some estimates), while at least 106 people were executed, most often by burning at the stake at the execution ground known as Zvezdišće, on the site of what is now the Tuškanac cinema.

Take the case of Matija Paun. Matija was a woman who chose to live and dress as a man. In a world that could not tolerate difference, this was declared “unnatural” and taken as proof of a pact with the Devil. Agata Golić, on the other hand, was pricked with needles by the judges as they searched for the so-called “Devil’s mark” – an ordinary mole that did not bleed was enough to condemn someone as a witch.

The courtroom itself was often the most terrifying place of all. Barica Cindrić, one of Zagreb’s best-known alleged witches, endured a living nightmare. At first she bravely remained silent, but after being stretched on the rack and tortured with fire, she confessed to anything – pacts with the Devil, witches’ sabbath at crossroads – simply to make the pain stop.

Yet in this dark story, one woman decided that matters could not continue in this way: Empress Maria Theresa. When the case of Magda Logomer Herucina reached her – a woman accused of turning herself into a fly and flying around sick people – the Empress declared, “Enough!”

Maria Theresa did not believe in witches; she believed in medicine and reason. She summoned Magda to Vienna, ordered physicians to examine her, and concluded that the accusations were nothing more than the products of ignorance and malice.

In order to put an end to the general madness and the flood of baseless accusations, a series of legal reforms concerning witch trials was gradually introduced. An ordinance issued in 1740 for the Austrian hereditary lands required that every death sentence in a witchcraft trial receive the Empress’s personal approval. In practice, this meant that every accused woman had to be taken to Vienna at the expense of the town bringing the charges.

Under her influence, the Croatian Parliament passed a law on 26 March 1756 requiring that all death sentences for witchcraft handed down in Croatia be submitted to the Empress for confirmation. As she never approved a single such sentence, the trials effectively came to an end.

The new criminal code of 1768, the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana, significantly tightened the standards of evidence in cases involving alleged magic, making convictions almost impossible. The abolition of torture in 1776 delivered the final blow to the witch trials.

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Today, as we walk across Ban Jelačić Square, it is hard to imagine that beneath the tarmac, the tram tracks, and the layers of the medieval and modern city, there once existed a world that never quite became a city – yet was never truly empty. This is the story of a Roman Zagreb that had no forum, no amphitheatre, and no walls, but possessed its own roads, its dead, its coins, its waters, and its people.

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Traces of Life Before 1094

Long before the Diocese of Zagreb was founded in 1094, and before Kaptol and Gradec began their long and turbulent history, this area was well-known to the Romans. Not as an urban centre, but as the edge of the world—a frontier zone between the river, the hills, and the great trade routes.

The archaeological record is clear: a Roman coin from the era of Emperor Diocletian found at Ban Jelačić Square, lost or discarded, yet enough to confirm a presence. There are burials near Zagreb Cathedral that do not fit the medieval context, pointing instead to Late Antiquity or the Early Christian period. Necropolises in the districts of Trnje and Stenjevac sit alongside former roads, just as Roman custom dictated. Pottery, currency, and minor finds scattered across Dubrava, Maksimir, and western Zagreb are not the foundations of a city, but they are the footprints of a life once lived.

In Stenjevac, coins were found belonging to Emperor Trajan Decius, a mid-3rd-century ruler. Decius was no minor figure; he was the first Roman emperor to fall in battle against the barbarians, at a time when the Empire was beginning to fracture. The presence of his coinage in the Zagreb area suggests this was no backwater periphery, but the edge of a stable world—a zone where insecurity was felt, yet life still followed Roman rules.

Roads That Knew the Way; The Sava as Ally and Foe

The Romans viewed everything through the lens of their roads; they were the arteries of the Empire. The Zagreb area sat along vital routes connecting Siscia (Sisak) and Poetovio (Ptuj), linking Pannonia to the Alpine world. Traces of these thoroughfares can still be identified on the city’s western edge, particularly around Črnomerec, where natural passes over the Medvednica mountain dictated the direction of travel.

The River Sava was the key to everything. For the Romans, it was a transport corridor, a source of trade, and a link to the great cities of Pannonia. Conversely, the Sava was unpredictable, prone to flooding, and dangerous for permanent construction.

The river made this area important, but it was also the reason a Roman city never took root here. The Romans were loath to risk monumental architecture where the water might wash away the foundations.

Andautonia – The City That Was Meant to Be

The true Roman city of this region was Andautonia, dating from the 1st to the 4th century AD. Located in present-day Šćitarjevo, some ten kilometres southeast of Zagreb, it had everything a Roman city required: paved streets, a sewage system, public buildings, and baths. As was the case

throughout the Empire, the baths in Andautonia were more than just a place to wash; they were a social hub—a setting for business deals, political discourse, alliances, and leisure.

The Romans never founded a city on the site of modern-day Zagreb due to the marshy, unstable ground, the Sava’s floodplains, and the lack of natural defences in the lowlands. The most sensible location was near Andautonia; the Romans built only where it made practical sense.

Why Is Roman Zagreb So Rarely Mentioned?

The answer is simple. It lacks the “spectacle” of amphitheatres, triumphal arches, forums, or preserved walls. There are only fragments: graves, lost coins, and roads vanished beneath the asphalt. Yet, some of today’s thoroughfares unconsciously follow the logic of Roman engineers. The road remembers longer than the city.

Zagreb identifies more easily with the Middle Ages, as that is where its urban story begins. The Roman period remains quiet, modest, almost awkward—a reminder that the city was not always a city.

Nonetheless, the Roman era in Zagreb is not a void. Romans came here, lived here, passed through, and died here. They simply did not stay long enough to leave monuments in stone.

This is the story of the Roman Zagreb that never existed—but without which, Zagreb would never have been born.