Zrinski Castle — Čabar

The elegant three-storey Zrinski-Frankopan castle dominates the small town of Čabar at the far north-western edge of Croatia — one of the finest surviving Renaissance castles in the country and by some way the largest historical building in Gorski Kotar. Built in 1651 by Petar Zrinski, one of the two Croatian magnates later executed by the Habsburgs for the 1671 anti-Vienna conspiracy, the castle is a symmetrical rectangular structure with four corner towers, mullioned windows and a beautifully preserved arcaded interior courtyard. After the Zrinski confiscation the estate passed through Habsburg hands, then to the Auersperg family, and finally to the Ghyczy dynasty who owned it until 1945. Today it houses a small but excellent museum on three floors: ground floor archaeology and Zrinski history; first floor recreated period rooms with 17th-century Croatian noble furniture; second floor a fascinating exhibit on the region's iron-working heritage (Čabar had one of the earliest blast furnaces in southeast Europe, operating from 1651). The castle courtyard hosts concerts through the summer. Čabar town itself is a lovely mountain settlement with well-preserved 19th-century plaster houses and a beautifully sited parish church of St. Anthony above the castle.