Preimenovanja zagrebačkih ulica i trgova
Renaming Zagreb Streets and Squares

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with changes in street names in the city of Zagreb. Taking the Lower Town (Donji grad) city area as an example, the first part of the paper analyses diachronic street name changes commencing from the systematic naming of streets in 1878. Analysis of official changes in street names throughout Zagreb’s history resulted in categorisation of five periods of ideologically motivated naming/name-changing: 1. the Croatia modernisation period, when the first official naming was put into effect, with a marked tendency towards politicisation and nationalisation of the urban landscape; 2. the period of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians/Yugoslavia, when symbols of the new monarchy, the idea of the fellowship of the Southern Slavs, Slavenophilism and the pro-Slavic geopolitical orientation were incorporated into the street names, and when the national idea was highly evident and remained so in that process; 3. the period of the NDH, the Independent State of Croatia, with decanonisation of the tokens of the Yugoslavian monarchy and the Southern Slavic orientation, and reference to the Ustashi and the German Nazi and Italian Fascist movement; 4. the period of Socialism, embedding the ideals and heroes of the workers’ movement and the War of National Liberation into the canonical system; and, 5. the period following the democratic changes in 1990, when almost all the signs of Socialism and the Communist /Antifascist struggle were erased, with the prominent presence of a process of installing new references to early national culture and historical tradition. The closing part of the paper deals with public discussions connected with the selection of a location for a square to bear the name of the first president of independent Croatia, Franjo Tuđman. Analysis of these public polemics shows two opposing discourses: the right-wing political option, which supports a central position for the square and considers the chosen area to be “inadequate and undefined”, “an insufficiently dignified place”, “a common field”, and “an untended park”, while the left-wing political option presents the chosen site for the square as “the second heart of the city”, “the most beautiful”, and “the largest and most representative square”. The discussion about Franjo Tuđman Square is interpreted in the paper as a reflection of the symbolic force of space and location.

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