Krapina-Zagorje County
Site of the world's largest Neanderthal fossil discovery (130,000 years old). Now Zagreb's commuter belt: 30 minutes on A2 motorway, losing population to the capital despite dense settlement and EU entrepreneurship award.
Humans have occupied this green, hilly corner of Croatia for 130,000 years. In 1899, paleontologist Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger discovered over 800 Neanderthal fossil remains in a sandstone cave above the Krapinica River—the largest Upper Pleistocene human skeletal collection ever recovered from a single site. The Krapina Neanderthal Museum, completed in 2010, now draws visitors to see where human ancestors sheltered long before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe.
The more recent past layered castles across the Zagorje hills. During the Ottoman wars, when Turkish armies threatened Central Europe, Croatian nobles built defensive fortresses at Veliki Tabor and Trakošćan. The Croatian Sabor (parliament) convened five times in Krapina's fortress between 1598 and 1607, making this small region a seat of Croatian governance during the empire's most precarious century. Thermal springs, known since Roman times, later attracted Habsburg aristocrats seeking cures—establishing the spa culture that now brands Zagorje as the 'Croatian Continental Riviera.'
Today the county functions as Zagreb's bedroom community. The A2 motorway reaches the capital in 30 minutes, and over a million passengers annually use the upgraded rail lines. Population density runs at 122 per square kilometer—well above Croatia's 84 average—yet the county still lost 15% of its population between 1991 and 2021, as young workers gravitate toward Zagreb's higher wages. The relationship exhibits classic source-sink dynamics: Zagorje provides commuters and pilgrims (800,000 annually visit the Marija Bistrica shrine), Zagreb provides employment and services.
The county won the EU's European Entrepreneurial Region award for 2025, recognizing its manufacturing base and 3.4% unemployment rate. Traditional crafts—UNESCO-listed gingerbread hearts and wooden toys—provide tourism income alongside the spas and castles. By 2026, Krapina-Zagorje's challenge is converting proximity to Zagreb from a source of demographic drain into a foundation for sustainable growth.