Flag of Croatia

How to read it

Article 11 of the Constitution makes the coat of arms the historic Croatian arms of 25 alternating red and white fields, and the flag red, white and blue with those arms in the centre. The Law on the Coat of Arms, the Flag and the Anthem (Narodne novine 55/90, amended in 1993 and 1994) fixes the rest. The flag is twice as long as it is wide, in three horizontal stripes of red, white and blue from the top, each a third of the width. The arms sit in the centre, their crown reaching into the red and their point into the blue, with their centre where the flag’s diagonals cross. Nothing on the arms or the flag may be changed. Store norske leksikon dates the flag to 21 December 1990, when the tricolour of 1848 was adopted with a new version of the arms drawn by the graphic designer Miroslav Šutej. Ships on the sea and on inland waters fly the same flag.

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The chequy shield and its crown

The shield is divided into 25 fields, 13 red and 12 white (silver), with a red field in the top corner by the pole. Croatians call it šahovnica, the chessboard. Above it a crown of five points joins the shield’s top corners in a gentle arc, and in the crown are five smaller shields. From left to right they are the oldest known arms of Croatia, a gold six-pointed star over a white crescent moon on blue; the Republic of Dubrovnik, two red bars on blue; Dalmatia, three gold crowned leopards’ heads on blue; Istria, a gold goat with red hooves and horns on blue; and Slavonia, two white bars on blue with a marten walking on the red between them and a gold six-pointed star above. The whole is edged with a red line.

Where the shield comes from

The oldest known picture of the chequy shield as Croatia’s arms is of 1495, on a building in Innsbruck, Store norske leksikon says; it has been Croatia’s symbol since the 1500s, and it stood for Croatia in the arms of Austria and Hungary until 1918 and of Yugoslavia from 1919 to 1945. The red, white and blue tricolour was taken up for the Croatian nation in 1848. From 1947 to 1990 the flag of the Socialist Republic of Croatia was the same tricolour with a red star.

Telling it from the Dutch and Serbian flags

The Netherlands and Luxembourg fly the same red, white and blue stripes in the same order, with no arms. Serbia’s flag has the arms too, but its stripes are red, blue and white, and the double-headed eagle sits off-centre towards the pole. Slovenia’s and Slovakia’s flags also carry arms, on white, blue and red stripes with the white at the top.

Hung upright

Hung vertically on a table, rostrum or other place of honour, the flag has its red on the left as seen from the front, the flag law says.