From 12,500 to Rare Relics: Zagreb's Phone Booths
Before the era of mobile phones, they were indispensable on every corner, with the first one installed as early as 1889 at Zagreb's main railway station.
Before the era of mobile phones, they were indispensable on every corner, with the first one installed as early as 1889 at Zagreb's main railway station.
In times when mobile phones were not part of everyday life, the only way to make a call outside the home was to find the nearest public phone booth. Today, they are almost forgotten details of the urban landscape, even though there were once more than 12,500 of them in Zagreb alone.
According to data from Hrvatski Telekom, before the 2000s, more than 12,500 phone booths were installed throughout the capital. Today, they have become a true rarity, and many passersby do not even notice them. Photographer Lucija Ocko has captured these remaining examples, bearing witness to the disappearance of a part of urban infrastructure.
The history of public phone booths in Croatia dates back to 1889, when the first one was installed in the building of Zagreb's railway station. Nearly four decades later, in 1928, with the introduction of the first automatic telephone exchange in Zagreb, coin-operated phone booths appeared on the streets, marking a new era of communication.
In the last decades of the past century, phone cards were used for calls, and many people collected them. About ten years ago, new, digital phone booths began to appear, but even they failed to restore their former glory. Today, almost no one uses them, so over time they have become mere relics of a bygone era.
