If you're out and about, mooching around the city, this is perfect way to brush up on your history and see it in context . . . certainly there as as many celebrated Croatian figures as you could possibly want to see in the "flesh" and this is a much nicer way than visiting an indoor museum and wasting good weather! The variety is enormous (and spread out) :
There are rulers and fighters . . . Coming out of the railway station onto Trg Kralja Tomislava, you'll see King Tomislav (photo attached to history entry below), the first king of medieval Croatia, who ruled from 910 and 928, on horseback (one raised hoof traditionally means the rider was injured in battle -- 2 raised means s/he died in battle). There are several St Georges,
including one outside the Faculty of Law, just up from Tomislava Sq, and another as you pass through the "Stone Gate" chapel (see entry below about the Upper Town), either skewering or already victorious over their respective dragons.
There are writers . . . including a curious bench-bound silvery man, Antun Matos, with an improbably sized moustache and a welcoming air, a spookily real full-sized woman, Marija Zagorda, standing beneath a sundial just beyond St George (see photo below).
There are politicians... best of all is Vecesslav Holjevac who stands outside the National Library, hands in the pockets of his ultra-smooth bronzed coat -- he was an anti-fascist major, apparently smooth of tongue in life and now of appearance in immortality . . .
. . . and there is Life, to be specific the mesmerising "Well of Life", by Ivan Mestrovic, in front of the National Theatre, a bright green circular construction of struggling or thriving figures in various stages of aging and activity, which is itself surrounded by another, outer circle of seats from which to rest and survey the images depicted on the well (see photo below).
Lastly, look out for Madonna outside the cathedral -- all golden and sparkling in the sunshine, looking down from on high. She's rather irreligiously in the middle of a mini-roundabout, but, nonetheless, the people of Zagreb bow their heads to her as they walk past.
I hope the photos below help to inspire and to demonstrate the variety and effort to which the city has gone -- it's certainly worth taking the trouble to search these out while you're a-wanderin' and, as you'd probably have come across almost all of them in any event, I hope this is a guide to who they are and why they're here.