GajniceA 1948 workers' estate with streets named after Latin American countries

Gajnice at a glance

• To the main square by ZET39 min
• To the centre as the crow flies7.9 km
• Residents (2021)⁹8,021
• Mostly built^4,61970s–1980s

Where Gajnice is

Gajnice is in the west of Zagreb, in the Podsused – Vrapče city district. Officially it matches the Gajnice local committee (mjesni odbor), the first of the district's seven, based at Argentinska 5.^8,9 Neighbourhoods have no official boundaries, so this guide describes Gajnice through that 46.53-hectare committee area. It is part of the settlement of Zagreb, and Gajnice was never recorded as a separate settlement.^8,9,7

The committee area is bounded by Dubravica street to the west, Karažnik to the north and Medpotoki to the east; to the south the boundary crosses Aleja Bologne and runs to the Stenjevec district.⁸ According to a 1992 study by the geographer Zoran Stiperski, almost all of Gajnice lies on the flat land along Aleja Bologne.⁷ The streets Stare Gajnice, Gajnički vidikovac I and II and Junkovićev put, with the parish church, belong to the neighbouring Gornji Stenjevec committee.⁸

For and against: life in Gajnice

What life is like in Gajnice

In 1992 Stiperski described Gajnice as a typical new urban housing estate. He left it out of his study of locally born residents because it had practically none; the settlers came mostly from Zagreb and from central and southern Croatia.⁷

The oldest buildings are the houses and blocks completed for the Jedinstvo factory between 1949 and 1952. They still stand at Grintavečka 2–8, Ulica kerestinečkih žrtava 51–57 and 42–48, and Brazilska 1–3.¹ According to the notice for a 2017 exhibition on the estate's beginnings, they have largely kept their original form.² Most of today's estate went up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the population of what is now the district grew sharply.^4,6 In 2025 Jutarnji list, citing former workers of the building firm Udarnik, wrote that Udarnik built most of Gajnice.³¹

According to Laboratorij Gajnice, a design competition for the estate's main square was published in the journal Čovjek i prostor in 1979. Branko Silađin's design was chosen the next year, and the square was finished by 1983, with 60 new trees.³⁸

The streets are named after Latin American countries and Spain (Argentinska, Brazilska, Čileanska, Meksička, Peruanska, Španjolska) and after Mahatma Gandhi, Henri Dunant and Pablo Neruda. Another group is called Grintavečka, Storžička, Vogelska, Kredarička, Obirska, Krnska and a few more.⁸ Some streets used to carry the names of Latin American figures: the library opened in 1979 at Ulica Salvadora Allendea 15, now Gajnice 15, and today's Meksička 6 was Ulica Adolfa Lopeza Mateosa 6.¹⁹ According to Lidija Čulo, writing in Bilten in 2023, these streets were renamed in the 1990s, along with the streets named after Che Guevara and Antonio Gramsci (now Gandhijeva), and the park named after Federico García Lorca became Park 101. brigade.²⁰

Residents who spoke to Večernji list in 2020 described Gajnice as a working-class neighbourhood where "every class had its own band". They praised the nurseries, a dog park and neighbours who help each other, and the reporter noted that you can walk across the estate in about twenty minutes.³⁰

Where the name Gajnice comes from

The estate's new north–south street continued an existing rural road called Gajnica, and the whole estate was soon named after it, writes the historian Goran Arčabić.¹ The word comes from gaj, which the Croatian language portal defines as a small wood or grove and Arčabić as young woodland. The portal lists Gajnice among the place names derived from it.^1,3

According to the Croatian Wikipedia, the area was first called the Jedinstvo Factory Settlement (Naselje tvornice Jedinstvo).⁴

A short history of Gajnice

The Jedinstvo factory, which made equipment for the food and chemical industries, was founded in 1946. From 1947 it built a new plant in Jankomir with the help of youth work brigades, and regular production began in the finished main hall in late 1948, with about 500 workers.⁵ In early April 1948 the Croatian urban planning institute drew the first sketch of a workers' estate west of the city, below the slopes of Medvednica, east of the Dubravica stream and north of the factory and the railway. On the recommendations of the air-defence administration of the federal Yugoslav interior ministry, a green strip along the railway separated the estate from the factory.¹

The land was expropriated in 1948 and 1949, and the building firm Udarnik started work in 1948.¹ The plans, for 5,000 residents living mostly in one- and two-storey buildings, were signed in 1949 by the architect Slavko Šimatić.^1,2 Only a small part was built. By the 1949 deadline a quarter of the planned family flats were built, and their use permits waited for the sewer, completed at the end of 1951 and inspected in September 1952.¹ By the mid-1950s there was a core of 11 residential buildings and a complex combining an industrial-school boarding house and a hostel for single workers. That complex no longer exists.¹ The early estate's buildings were designed by Stjepan Gomboš, Ivo Bartolić, Slavko Löwy, Lavoslav Horvat and Milan Tomičić.^2,4

A school was paid for by a local levy (samodoprinos) raised in 1965. The City cut the design from 24 classrooms to 16, and the school opened at 8 am on 1 September 1969 with 723 pupils.¹¹ The Gajnice parish was founded in 1971, split off from the Stenjevec parish.^16,17 From 1974 to 1990 today's Podsused – Vrapče and Stenjevec districts formed the city municipality of Susedgrad.⁶

According to the school's history, on the first school day of 1991 the first-year pupils ran to the shelters with their teachers, and members of the 101st Brigade set out from the school.¹¹ Jedinstvo went bankrupt in 2002, and since 2005 a new company, Jedinstvo – Novo, has worked in the remaining Jankomir halls.⁵ In recent years the school has gained new sports halls, the Ankica Lepej promenade has opened, and in September 2026 work began on a skate park.^12,33,37

1. 1946The Jedinstvo factory is founded.⁵
2. 1948The first sketch of the workers' estate is drawn and building begins.¹
3. 1949Plans for 5,000 residents are finished; the first one-storey houses are probably done by the end of the year.¹
4. 1956The community hall and a building with four shop units, now part of the market, are finished, and money for a bowling alley is approved.¹
5. 1969The Gajnice school opens on 1 September with 723 pupils.¹¹
6. 1971The Gajnice parish is founded, and the school is named after Dragutin Domjanić.^16,17,11
7. 1977The parish buys a barn and a stable and turns them into a chapel, blessed on 18 December.^15,16
8. 1979The library opens in 40 m² at Ulica Salvadora Allendea 15.¹⁹
9. 1984A memorial plaque to Salvador Allende is put up, according to its inscription as reported in Bilten.²⁰
10. 1987The band Hladno pivo forms in Gajnice.³²
11. 1992The library moves to 240 m² at what is now Meksička 6.^18,19
12. 2022The school gets 4,267.39 m² of sports halls.¹²
13. 2024The Ankica Lepej promenade opens.³³
14. 2026The renovated parish church is consecrated, and work on a skate park begins.^17,37

What to see in Gajnice

• Jedinstvo's first houses

  Eight one-storey houses in two rows (Grintavečka 2–8 and Ulica kerestinečkih žrtava 51–57) and three two-storey blocks (Kerestinečkih žrtava 42–48 and Brazilska 1–3), completed between 1949 and 1952. They are the core of the estate.^1,4

• Tržnica Gajnice and Gajnice 36

  The market is at Gajnice 32. Its buildings include the community hall and a building with four shop units, both finished in late 1956, and the old bowling alley is now the building at Gajnice 36.^1,21

• The school mosaics

  Edo Murtić gave OŠ Dragutina Domjanića the mosaic in its entrance courtyard, now a protected cultural monument (Gajnice 31, Z-4085).^11,13 According to the school's history, its entrance hall also has Franjo Hoti's 1977 mosaic "Alegorija igre i nauke" (Allegory of Play and Learning).¹¹

• Salvador Allende memorial stone

  According to Lidija Čulo, writing in Bilten in 2023, a stone with a plaque stands at the corner of Sigetje and Gajnice, across Aleja Bologne from the Gajnice train stop. The plaque says it was put up in September 1984 by the Socialist Alliance of the Working People of Croatia.²⁰

• Park 101. brigade

  According to Laboratorij Gajnice, this is the estate's largest park. It has maple, oak, pine, magnolia, birch, plum and pear trees, sculptures in local Bizek stone, and a bocce court that never caught on.³⁸

• Church of St Joseph the Worker

  At Junkovićev put 6, in the Gornji Stenjevec committee area. In 1977 the parish bought a derelict 18.80 × 7.40 m barn and a stable added in 1941, and turned them into a chapel and a priest's flat.^15,16 According to the parish, the church stands in a small valley by the Dubravica stream because no building permit could be had inside the estate.¹⁴ Archbishop Dražen Kutleša consecrated the renovated church on 12 April 2026.¹⁷

• Kurija Junković

  A manor house with a watermill at Junkovićev put 2, in the Gornji Stenjevec committee area, listed as a protected cultural monument.^13,8 Its 2.5-hectare park has been protected as a work of landscape architecture since 1971, and an oriental plane about 500 years old grows there.²⁴

Did you know?

• 1Hladno pivo was formed in Gajnice in 1987 by Zoran and Mladen Subošić, Mile Kekin and Tadija Martinović. Their 2000 live album is called "Istočno od Gajnica" (East of Gajnice).³² According to Ana-Marija Malbašić, writing in Novi uvez, they played at the library's 40th birthday in 2019 as its "best-known musical members".¹⁹
• 2According to the school's history, a fair of teaching equipment at the Gajnice school in 1970 drew about 6,000 teachers from all over Yugoslavia, and the school was left with equipment worth 2,000,000 dinars.¹¹
• 3According to the same source, the school taught in three shifts for 37 years, with more than a thousand pupils.¹¹
• 4According to a 2024 Index.hr article, Ankica Lepej, whom the portal calls Croatia's first whistleblower, lived in Gajnice from 1975 to 1989 and worked at the local Zagrebačka banka branch. A promenade in the neighbourhood has carried her name since 2024.³³

Everyday life in Gajnice

Renting in Gajnice

Nearby neighbourhoods

• StenjevecNeighbourhood guide
• MalešnicaNeighbourhood guide
• ŠpanskoNeighbourhood guide
• VrapčeNeighbourhood guide
• PodsusedNeighbourhood guide
• PrečkoNeighbourhood guide

• Compare districts: Podsused – Vrapče and Črnomerec
• Compare districts: Podsused – Vrapče and New Zagreb – West
• Compare districts: Podsused – Vrapče and Stenjevec
• All Zagreb neighbourhood guides

Questions about life in Gajnice