PodsusedAn old market town below Susedgrad, between the Sava and Medvednica

Podsused at a glance

• To the main square by ZET49 min
• To the centre as the crow flies10.6 km
• Residents (2021)³²6,040
• First written record^2,31209

Where Podsused is

Podsused is at the far western end of Zagreb, on the city boundary.³¹ Officially it belongs to the Podsused – Vrapče city district, the westernmost in the city, which borders Sveta Nedelja on the Sava and Zaprešić on the Krapina.^35,1 The neighbourhood matches the local committee area (mjesni odbor) of Podsused, one of the district's seven. Its official street list takes in the old centre around Podsusedski trg and Podsusedska aleja, and also Podsusedsko dolje, the Bizek I–VI streets and Jarek donji, gornji and podsusedski.^33,31 A kvart is an everyday name with no official boundary, so this guide describes Podsused through that committee area.

The area runs from the city boundary in the west to the Stenjevec district in the east, and from the Sava, where it borders the Novi Zagreb – zapad district, north into the Medvednica woods. The hill settlements of Kostanjek, Lisičina, Dolec and Stare Gajnice belong to the neighbouring Gornji Stenjevec committee.³¹ According to the City's district analysis, based on 2011 data, the Podsused committee area makes up 38.4% of the district, more than any other.³⁵ Legally it is part of the settlement of Zagreb, not a separate settlement.³¹

For and against: life in Podsused

What life is like in Podsused

According to a 2011 lecture reported by the Croatian Chamber of Architects, Podsused stands out for its detached family houses, villas and summer houses with large gardens, built in a rural style. Building was still loose and low then, with a growing number of taller multi-unit houses.⁶

The historic core around Podsusedski trg has been a protected cultural property since 2004 (Z-1529).^25,26 Its protection order describes one-storey houses with pitched roofs whose ridges run parallel to the street, plain façades and roomy yards, which together form a uniform whole.^6,7 A horse-chestnut avenue planted in the early 20th century still lines Podsusedska aleja and carries on across the square.^6,2

Around 1900 Podsused was a summer retreat for better-off Zagreb families, halfway between Zagreb and Samobor, and the art historian Irena Kraševac compared it with Vienna's Grinzing.^2,56 According to the same lecture, the land reform between the wars split the large estates into building plots, and well-designed family houses went up from the late 1930s.⁶

The cement works brought workers and new housing.^2,7 According to a 2020 interview in Susedgradske novine, two rows of single-storey workers' cottages survive at Vučak 4 and 6, and in the 1950s the works built Podsused's first blocks of flats at the east end of Blanje.^7,2 In its last decades the factory was a heavy polluter, and cement dust settled on trees and roofs.^2,7

The biggest change by 2011, the same lecture says, came in Podsusedsko polje, where shopping centres went up on land once set aside for a recreation centre.⁶ In that 2020 interview an architect who has lived in Podsused since 2002 described it as green and good for walks, and said living there feels like a summer resort where time has stood still.⁷

Where the name Podsused comes from

Podsused means "below Sused".^1,2 It grew up as the settlement beneath the medieval fortress of Sused, today called Susedgrad.^1,2,3 The linguist Branimir Brgles places that settlement about 500 metres south of the fortress.³

The historian Miroslav Brandt linked the name to the Russian word podsusjedok, a landless man working on a serf's land. In 1992 Lujo Margetić judged this no more convincing than Brandt's other theory and concluded that Podsused is simply the settlement below Susedgrad.⁴

The name Susedgrad stands for three things: the castle, the former municipality (1955–1962 and 1974–1990) and the 10090 Zagreb-Susedgrad postal area.^1,21,27 Podsused is still the name of a cadastral municipality (k.o. Podsused).²⁵

A short history of Podsused

The grave of a 9th-century Slavic warrior, with iron and bronze weapons, was found at the fortress site.^1,27 The Susedgrad area was already settled in Roman times, and the old road linking Zagreb with Styria and Carniola ran at the foot of the fortress, beside a shallow ford over the Sava.^5,3 A charter of King Andrew II from 1209 mentions St Martin's chapel, the oldest written record of Podsused.^2,3 Susedgrad is first named as a royal fortress in 1316, and the City says King Charles Robert built it that year.^2,1 According to Brgles, the place-name Podgrađe, recorded in 1287, suggests that a fortification stood there earlier.³

According to the Vijenac article, from the second half of the 15th century the sources speak of a market town below the fortress of Susedgrad.² Under its lord Franjo Tahy the great peasant revolt broke out here in 1573, and the City dates its outbreak in the Susedgrad and Gornji Stenjevec area to 3 February.^1,2,27 The castle burned in the early 17th century and has been a ruin ever since.^5,27 In the 19th century Ban Josip Jelačić acquired the estate.^5,14

In 1862 the first railway to reach Zagreb passed through Podsused, with a station there.^2,6 Together with the 1884 road bridge over the Sava and the avenue laid out in 1891, it set off the village's growth.^2,6 From 1901 to 1979 the narrow-gauge Samoborček ran through, and in 1908 the Mandl family founded the Croatia Portland cement works, which locals called the Fabrika.^19,1,18,2 Between the wars the wooden bathing beach on the Sava, opened in 1924, was a favourite summer spot for people from Zagreb.^10,2

In the 1880s Podsused belonged to the Stenjevec municipality, and after 1945 it had its own local people's committee.^15,1 It joined Zagreb in about 1949–1950, became a city municipality of its own in 1952 and part of the Susedgrad municipality in 1955.^1,2,14 The cement works, renamed Sloboda in 1950, closed in the late 1980s; digging marl for it set off the Kostanjek landslide.^18,2 The earthquake of 22 March 2020 badly damaged the parish church and St Martin's chapel, and whole sections of Susedgrad's walls collapsed.^21,55

1. 9th c.A Slavic warrior is buried at the fortress site with iron and bronze weapons.^1,27
2. 1209A charter of King Andrew II mentions St Martin's chapel, the oldest record of Podsused.^2,3
3. 1316Susedgrad is first named as a royal fortress.^2,1
4. 1573The great peasant revolt breaks out around Susedgrad.^1,2
5. 1862The first railway to Zagreb passes through Podsused, with a station there.^2,6
6. 1886A one-class primary school opens with 42 pupils in a house rented from Count Đuro Jelačić.^15,16,17
7. 1901The Samoborček starts running; its last train runs on 31 December 1979.^19,1
8. 1908The Mandl family founds the Croatia Portland cement works.^18,2
9. 1924A wooden bathing beach with 40 changing cabins opens on the Sava.^10,2
10. 1949–1950Podsused joins the city of Zagreb.^1,2
11. 1958Teaching begins in the new school building designed by Daša Crnković and Bernardo Bernardi.^17,15
12. 1987The Sutinska vrela hall is built for the Universiade.^41,40
13. 2004The historic core enters the national register of cultural property.^25,26
14. 2026The school gets a permit for its extension, and ZET opens an electric-bus charging station in Podsused.^60,63

What to see in Podsused

• Susedgrad

  The ruins of a medieval castle on the last south-western spur of Medvednica, above a cliff that drops towards the Sava, protected since 1963.^26,27,8 From the centre it's a few minutes' walk through a park.¹⁴ Since 2009 the Podsused festival (Podsusedske svečanosti), built around a knights' tournament, has been held here every autumn.^14,11

• St Martin's chapel

  In Jagodišće, in the Dolje valley, at the mouth of a cave where by legend the hermit St Martin lived; it isn't entirely clear which Martin the chapel is dedicated to.^2,3,23,21 Its heritage registration says it probably dates from the 10th century and was rebuilt in 1899 to designs by Hektor von Eckel.⁶

• Church of St John Bosco

  At Vinobreška 2. The Salesians built it in a few months in 1939 to a design by the architect Zvonimir (Zvonko) Požgaj, and the parish was founded on 6 September 1942.^23,21,22,24 It has a coffered timber ceiling, an altar of Brač stone and a mosaic Way of the Cross by Stanko Gašparec.²²

• Podsusedski trg

  No. 5 is Baron Rauch's mid-19th-century hunting lodge, with carved timber gables.⁶ The former Karlin inn at No. 24, built in 1890, was demolished in 2009 and rebuilt to its original street front.^6,7 According to the city libraries (Knjižnice grada Zagreba), the library is in the first school building, opened in 1892.¹⁰

• Vila Hütter

  At Dvoriček 22. It was built around 1910 as the Tucić summer house for the manager of Baron Rauch's estate.^6,56 According to Index.hr, after nationalisation it was a clinic until the late 1980s.⁵⁶ With its ownership unresolved, it has stood derelict for decades.^56,6

• The Zagreb whale

  A life-size reconstruction of Mesocetus agrami on Aleja Bologne, by the turn for the Sutinska vrela hall. The sculptor Zdenko Šlibar made it with casts of the original bones by Slavimir Slaviček, and on 22 April 2001 Podsused's children unveiled it.^28,29

• Matija Gubec bust

  By Vanja Radauš, 1968, on Aleja seljačke bune.^30,31

• Potok Dolje

  A stream of about 3.5 km that runs from the slopes of Medvednica through Podsused to the Sava. A stretch north of Podsused is a Natura 2000 site, protected for the stone crayfish.⁵²

Did you know?

• 1The Podsused whale was a young animal about 6 metres long that lived 12 to 13 million years ago in the Paratethys sea, which then reached as far as Medvednica.^28,29 The Archaeological Museum says it is the only whale species named after a city with no sea coast.²⁹
• 2Between the wars Podsused children wove little baskets of rush, filled them with wild flowers and handed them to day-trippers boarding the Samoborček for a coin or two.¹¹
• 3Stone from the Bizek quarry went into the 1967–68 renovation of Zagreb Cathedral.^53,54
• 4Podsused library lends seeds. It was the third branch of the city libraries to start a seed library, and from February to October members can borrow up to three kinds a day.^13,12
• 5The basketball player Koraljka (Korie) Hlede, fourth pick in the first WNBA draft in 1998, came through KK Podsused.^42,43

Everyday life in Podsused

Renting in Podsused

Nearby neighbourhoods

• GajniceNeighbourhood guide
• StenjevecNeighbourhood guide
• MalešnicaNeighbourhood guide
• ŠpanskoNeighbourhood guide
• VrapčeNeighbourhood 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 Podsused