The Donji Grad was planned in the 1880s on the model of Vienna and Budapest: a rectilinear grid of wide streets and tree-lined boulevards, anchored by a horseshoe of parks called the Lenuci Horseshoe (Zrinjevac, Strossmayer, Tomislav and others) that wraps around the southern part of the centre. The apartment buildings are mostly six storeys, neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque, with caryatids and stucco wreaths.
This is where most of the city's serious cultural institutions stand — the National Theatre, the Mimara, the Archaeological Museum, the Art Pavilion — and it is where Zagreb does its shopping (along Ilica) and its café-sitting (along Bogovićeva and around the parks). The main train station sits at the southern edge, looking up Tomislav Square toward the centre.