The University of Zagreb is the oldest university in Croatia and among the oldest in Europe. Its history begins on the 23^rd of September, 1669, when the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the King of Hungary and Croatia, Leopold I, granted university status and privileges to a Jesuit academy in the Free Royal City of Zagreb. On that day the School Zagrabiensis - a public-law institution of higher education.

At the instigation of that great Maecenas of Croatian education, culture and art, Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, the Croatian Parliament provided the legal foundation for the establishment of a university in Zagreb in 1861. During his visit to Zagreb in 1868, Emperor Franz Joseph signed the Article on the University of Zagreb. Five years later, the Parliament passed another Article, which was sanctioned by the ruler on 5 January 1874. This was followed by the solemn opening of the modern University of Zagreb on 19 October 1874. The University comprised four faculties: law, theology, philosophy and medicine. A pharmaceutics course was established in 1882 within the Faculty of Philosophy, and a Forestry Academy was opened in 1897. In 1908, the Academy established a School of Geodetics, which became the Technical College in 1919. The Faculty of Medicine was founded in 1917.

Since 1945, moving trough several stages of development, the University of Zagreb has achieved outstanding progress, not only in a numerical sense - through the increased number of faculties, the number of enrolled and graduated students, the number of master's degrees and doctorates - but also in overall development of college education and art. Nowadays, the Zagreb University comprises 28 faculties, three art academies, two university schools and two junior colleges.