Map - Zadar

Zadar (, ; historically known as Zara (from Venetian and Italian: ); see also other names), is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Croatia. It is situated on the Adriatic Sea, at the northwestern part of Ravni Kotari region. Zadar serves as the seat of Zadar County and of the wider northern Dalmatian region. The city proper covers 25 km2 with a population of 75,082, making it the second-largest city of the region of Dalmatia and the fifth-largest city in the country.

Today, Zadar is a historical center of Dalmatia, Zadar County's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, educational, and transportation centre. Zadar is also the episcopal see of the Archdiocese of Zadar. Because of its rich heritage, Zadar is today one of the most popular Croatian tourist destinations, named "entertainment center of the Adriatic" by The Times and "Croatia's new capital of cool" by The Guardian.

UNESCO's World Heritage Site list included the fortified city of Zadar as part of Venetian Works of Defence between 15th and 17th centuries: Stato da Terra – western Stato da Mar in 2017.

The name of the city of Zadar emerged as Iadera and Iader in ancient times. It was most probably related to a hydrographical term, coined by an ancient Mediterranean people and their Pre-Indo-European language. They transmitted it to later settlers, the Liburnians. The name of the Liburnian settlement was first mentioned by a Greek inscription from Pharos (Stari grad) on the island of Hvar in 384 BC, where the citizens of Zadar were noted as Ίαδασινοί (Iadasinoi). According to the Greek source Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax the city was Ίδασσα (Idassa), probably a Greek transcription of the original Liburnian expression.

During Antiquity the name was often recorded in sources in Latin in two forms: Iader in the inscriptions and in the writings of classic writers, Iadera predominantly among the late Antiquity writers, while usual ethnonyms were Iadestines and Iadertines. The accent was on the first syllable in both Iader and Iadera forms, which influenced the early-Medieval Dalmatian forms Jadra, Jadera and Jadertina, where the accent kept its original place.

In Dalmatian, Jadra (Jadera) was pronounced Zadra (Zadera), due to the phonetic transformation of Ja- to Za-. That change was also reflected in the Croatian name Zadar (recorded as Zader in the 12th century ), developed from masculine Zadъrъ. An ethnonym graphic Jaderani from the legend of Saint Chrysogonus in the 9th century, was identical to the initial old-Slavic form Zadъrane, or Renaissance Croatian Zadrani.

The Dalmatian names Jadra, Jadera were transferred to other languages; in Venetian Jatara (hyper-urbanism in the 9th century) and Zara, Hungarian Zára, Tuscan Giara, Latin Iadora and Diadora (Constantine VII in De Administrando Imperio, 10th century, probably an error in the transcription of di iadora), Old French Jadres (Geoffroy de Villehardouin in the chronicles of the Fourth Crusade in 1202), Arabic Jādhara (جاذَرة) and Jādara (جادَرة) (Al-Idrisi, 12th century), Iadora (Guido, 12th century), Catalan Jazara, Jara, Sarra (14th century) and the others.

Jadera became Zara when it fell under the authority of the Republic of Venice in the 15th century. Zara was later used by the Austrian Empire in the 19th century, but it was provisionally changed to Zadar/Zara from 1910 to 1920; from 1920 to 1947 the city became part of Italy as Zara, and finally was named Zadar in 1947.