One of Zagreb's most storied coffee houses is coming back. Corso, the café that first poured coffee on 14 December 1907 at the corner of Ilica and Gundulićeva streets, is being restored by the City of Zagreb, which owns the building and has set aside roughly €2 million for design work and refurbishment.
The café sits inside a protected heritage building at Ilica 25–27 and Gundulićeva 2, originally built for the Croatian-Slavonian Land Central Savings Bank. That structure has already undergone a full renovation financed by the Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction and State Assets, including structural work on the roughly 930 square metres of basement, ground-floor and mezzanine space that make up the café. With the shell sorted, the city is now preparing detailed design documentation for the interiors.
This won't be a modern gut job. Conservation requirements set by the city's heritage office will shape the project, and the plan is to restore decorative features and recreate lost furnishings using archival photographs and historical descriptions as references. Where original elements survive, they'll be kept. The idea is to bring back the space as it was — but with kitchens, service and facilities that meet today's hospitality standards.
The café carries real cultural weight. It appeared in the feuilletons of Antun Gustav Matoš, one of Croatia's most beloved writers, and Mayor Tomislav Tomašević has stressed how much the venue means to locals. Once the refurbishment is finished, the city will run a public tender to choose an operator, so it's likely a private hospitality group will take over day-to-day running under heritage conditions.
For travellers, this is a good reason to put Zagreb's upper-town café circuit on the map — or back on it. The Croatian capital has long punched above its weight for coffee culture, with grand Viennese-style kavanе where people linger for hours over cake and newspapers. Corso's return adds a century-old name back into that mix, right on Ilica, the city's busiest shopping street and an easy walk from Ban Jelačić Square. No reopening date has been announced yet — design documentation comes first, then works, then the tender — so treat it as a reason to follow progress rather than book around it for next weekend. In the meantime, nearby institutions like Café Espro or the historic kavanе around the main square will keep you caffeinated in period style.
