Croatia is at the crossroads of Central Europe, Southeast Europe, and the Mediterranean. It borders Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the southeast, Montenegro to the southeast, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest and Slovenia to the northwest. Its capital city is Zagreb. Croatia’s Adriatic Sea coast contains more than a thousand islands. Part of the territory in the extreme south surrounding Dubrovnik is connected to the rest of the mainland by territorial waters, but separated on land by a short coastline strip belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina around Neum.

There are four types of biogeographical regions in Croatia—Mediterranean along the coast, Alpine in most of Lika and Gorski Kotar, Pannonian along Drava and Danube, and continental in the remaining areas. The World Wide Fund for Nature divides Croatia between three ecoregions—Pannonian mixed forests, Dinaric Mountains mixed forests and Illyrian deciduous forests. Croatia’s most famous lakes are the Plitvice lakes, a system of 16 lakes with waterfalls connecting them over dolomite and limestone cascades. The lakes are known for their distinctive colours, ranging from turquoise to green, grey or blue.