ja_mageia

Just to the south of Kamenita vrata, Jezuitski trg is flanked on the east side by Klovičevi dvori, a seventeenth-century former Jesuit monastery now used for temporary art exhibitions

(Tues–Sun 11am-7pm; the admission price varies according to what's on display; www.galerijaklovic.hr), and housing a small cafe and courtyard that hosts concerts during the Zagreb Summer Festival. Beyond here, where Jezuitski trg opens out onto the next square, Katarinin trg, is St Catherine's Church (Crkva svete Katerine; daily 10am– 1pm), built by the Jesuits in the 1620s and containing one of the most delightful Baroque interiors in Croatia, with its lacework pattern of pink and white stucco whorls executed by Antonio Quadric, in the 1720s. Francesco Robba's delicate portrayal of the Jesuit order's founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, to the right of the main altar, is the outstanding piece of statuary, portraying the saint in a typically Baroque swoon of spiritual ecstasy.

On the north side of the square, the Museum of Modern Art (Muzej suvremene umjetnosti -Sat 11am-7pm, Sun 10am–fpm; www.mdc.hr/msu) mounts imaginative temporary shows from Croatia and abroad – its large collection of contemporary work is currently in storage, awaiting the construction of a new museum south of the centre in Novi Zagreb. On the south side of the square, Dverce leads down to the top station of the funicular down to Ilica and to Kula lotešak, or "Burglars' Tower" (May–Oct Tues–Sun 11 am-8pm), another remnant of the upper town's fortifications, from which a bell was once sounded every evening before the city gates were closed (to keep out burglars, hence the name). An energetic tramp up a tightly-wound spiral staircase brings you out onto a wooden terrace, with superb views of Zagreb's red-tiled roofs below. On the way up you'll pass the window through which a small cannon is fired every day at noon, a practice begun in 1877 to coordinate the city's bell-ringers, A story linking the firing of a cannon on this spot with the defeat of a fifteenth-century attack by the Turks is regularly trotted out by the tourist guides, but is most likely a nineteenth-century invention: Ottoman armies once succeeded in sacking Remete (now a suburb of Zagreb) to the northeast, but never mounted a serious assault on the city itself. On either side of the tower stretches Strossmayerovo getaligte, a promenade which follows the line of Grader's former south-facing fortifications. Again, the views over the city and plains beyond are terrific.