The Republic of Croatia is a crescent-shaped country in Europe bordering the Mediterranean, Central Europe and the Balkans. Its capital is Zagreb. In recent history, it was a republic in the SFR Yugoslavia, but it achieved independence in 1991. It is a candidate for membership of the European Union.Croatia is the Latinized version of the native name of the country: Hrvatska listen. The letter “r” in the first syllable “hrv” is rolled or continuant. However, instead of the Latinized version, many languages use a form more similar to the native one. Various forms are listed in Wiktionary. The country code for Croatia is HR (per ISO 3166)and the Croatian Internet root domain ends with .hr.

Full name: Republic of Croatia

Nationality
noun: Croat(s), Croatian(s)
adjective: Croatian

Area
total: 56,542 sq km
land: 56,414 sq km
water: 128 sq km

Population: 4,495,904 (July 2005 est.)

Ethnic groups
Croat 89.6%
Serb 4.5%
other 5.9% (including Bosniak, Hungarian, Slovene, Czech, and Roma)

Capital: ZAGREB 726,770

Largest Cities
Split – 189,388
Rijeka – 167,964
Osijek – 104,761

Official Language
Croatian 96.1%
Serbian 1%
other and undesignated 2.9% (including Italian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and German)

Religion
Roman Catholic 87.8%
Orthodox 4.4%
other Christian 0.4%
Muslim 1.3%
other and undesignated 0.9%
none 5.2%

Political system: Republic

GDP: purchasing power parity – $50.33 billion

GDP per head: purchasing power parity – $11,200

Annual growth: 3.7% (2004 est.)

GDP – composition by sector
agriculture: 8.2%
industry: 30.1%
services: 61.7%

Inflation: 2.5% (2004 est.)
The Adriatic Area includes the narrow coastal belt separated from the hinterland by high mountains. This is predominantly a karst area with very dry summers. The few streams mainly follow narrow gorges in breaking their way through to the sea. The Croatian coastal area may further be divided into the northern (Istria nad Kvarner) and southern part (Dalmatia). It also lends itself to a longitudinal division into the islands, the coast proper and the immediate hinterland.

The Croatian Adriatic coast is one of the most indented in the world: it has 1185 islands and islets with a total coastline of 4,058 km, the total length of the mainland coast being 1777 km. The largest island is Krk; other large islands include Cres, Brac, Hvar, Pag and Korcula. The largest peninsulas are Istria and Peljesac, and the largest bay is Kvarner Bay.

The area of Croatia can be divided into three major natural and geographic parts:
The Pannonian and Peri-Pannonian area comprises the lowland and hilly parts of eastern and northwestern Croatia; mountains higher than 500 m are rare and of an insular character. Most of this area is being used for farming and livestock breading. Slavonija and Baranja in the east are the most suiotable for growing cereals; the humid valleys and the hills are richly afforested while the northwestern part, which gravitates to Zagreb, is industrially the most developed.
The hilly and mountainous area, which separates Pannonian Croatia from its coastal part, is less developed. Its future development will be based on its transit importance, the growth of the already existing wood and timber industry, and the still underexploited potential for the production of healthy food, and winter and rural tourism.

It stretches from the northwest to the southeast between the Balkan and Apenine peninsulas for 783 km, its average width being 170 km. Its average depth is 252 m; its northwestern part is shallow (maximum 23 m in the Bay of Trieste), while it is much deaper in the south (1200 m in the South Adriatic basin). The prevailing winds are the cold bura, the humid jugo and the refreshing maestrale.