Urania Bar

Specialty coffee and cocktails share equal billing at Urania, which is unusual enough to organise a whole day around. Morning is coffee and brunch, evening is a short cocktail list and a spread of tapas, and in between the room is as likely to be hosting a lecture as a lunch.

A cinema turned into a space of creation

Urania occupies a former Zagreb cinema of the same name, reworked behind an all-glass frontage that pushes light deep into the room. A large communal table anchors the middle of it, with enough other seating that solo visitors, working afternoons and long evenings all fit without competing for the same corner.

The house calls itself prostor kreacije, a space of creation, and programmes accordingly: lectures, conversations, public debates, film, music, architecture and design sit on the calendar alongside recurring formats such as Creative Hour, Sustainable Hour and Meetings. The stated aim is to blur the line between experts and the public, which in practice means the coffee tables and the cocktail glasses are part of the same event.

Coffee first, then the bar

The coffee side won Urania the European Coffee Trip Country Winner title for Croatia in 2025, and it is the part of the offer most consistently singled out. The house does not publish a roaster or an origin list, so the honest approach is to ask what is on the bar and let the barista route you.

The cocktails carry the same weight rather than arriving as an evening afterthought: reworked classics on one hand, house originals on the other, all in recognisable bar language rather than novelty for its own sake. Tapas are the intended companion, ordered as a spread across the table rather than a plate each.

How to use it

Come in the morning for specialty coffee and brunch, and take the communal table if you plan to stay a while. Come later for cocktails and small plates, when the same room reads as a modern cocktail and tapas bar rather than a cafe.

Either way, look at what is on the programme first, because the character of the place shifts depending on whether it is running a debate, a screening or an ordinary Saturday night. That doubling is the point of Urania rather than a side effect of the building it inherited.