Region in Croatia
Slavonia
- Best time to go
- Apr, May, June, Sept, Oct
- Part of
- Croatia
Slavonia is Croatia's flat, fertile east, a land of wheat fields, oak forests, vineyards and slow rivers far from the Adriatic.
It covers five counties, from Virovitica and Požega in the west to Osijek, Vukovar and Ilok on the Danube, and includes Baranja in the far north-east. Baroque towns, wine cellars and generous food built on paprika, river fish and kulen sausage give it a character quite unlike the coast. It is also where the 1991 war hit hardest, and towns such as Vukovar keep that memory carefully.
Things to do
Don't miss in Slavonia
- Walk the cobbled streets of Tvrđa, the 18th-century Habsburg fortress quarter of Osijek.
- Take a boat into Kopački rit Nature Park, one of the largest wetlands in Europe, to watch herons, cormorants and white-tailed eagles.
- Visit the memorial sites in Vukovar, including the hospital and the water tower, to understand what happened here in 1991.
- Taste Graševina and Traminac in the old cellars of Ilok, Croatia's easternmost town above the Danube.
- See Strossmayer's red-brick cathedral and the Lipizzaner horses of the state stud farm in Đakovo.
- Hike the forested hills of Papuk Nature Park, a UNESCO Global Geopark near the village of Velika.
- Tour the wine villages of Baranja, such as Zmajevac and Suza, and eat fiš paprikaš and čobanac in a family-run restaurant.
Getting there
How to get to Slavonia
Most visitors reach Slavonia by road from Zagreb Airport: the A3 motorway runs east through the whole region towards the Serbian border, and the A5 branches north to Osijek, which takes about three hours from Zagreb. Osijek has its own small airport with a limited schedule, and Budapest and Belgrade airports are both within a few hours' drive of the eastern towns. Trains run from Zagreb to Osijek and Vinkovci, and buses link the main towns, but a car makes it far easier to reach the villages, wineries and nature parks.