The first European journeys to attract travellers in high numbers were those undertaken by the British in the 17th and the 18th century when the members of higher social standing travelled around Europe which became known as the Grand Tour (Towner, 1985). As regards travel writing, this type of travel resulted in travel books, a well appreciated literary genre. After the 19th century post-Napoleonic Europe had been connected by a network of railway, travel became affordable to the bourgeois classes of Germany, England and France marking the beginning of a new practice – tourism. Since its very beginnings a dichotomy of “good travel” and “bad tourism” was formed and the divide between the two was deepened by the practices of the tourist agency Thomas Cook which first organized affordable package tours. This change was followed by travel literature, so, as the consequence, the first modern travel guidebook was published in 1836. It instantly became a publishing success, but simultaneously an object of defamation with a reputation of something unworthy of any appreciation, let alone scientific study. Due to the scientific neglect the negative perception of the genre has been maintained to this day (Peel i Sørensen, 2016). Although this specific text type has been overseen in the traditional humanistic and social sciences as well and perceived unworthy of scholarly attention, in the past several decades this has changed as travel guidebooks have become ever more interesting to scholars of different scientific backgrounds. This attention has resulted in the first scientific definitions of this ubiquitous text-type used by millions all over the world. As a commercially distributed entity, a travel guidebook is made for transient non-locals to be used in the field (Peel and Sørensen, 2016: 29). As a rule, it consists of three parts which define its structure: information about the country, practical information and the description of the destination (Müller, 2012: 27). Guidebooks are visual and they typically describe the spaces that are looked at. According to Müller, it is an illusionary optical media format that serves as a pair of glasses through which one observes the world. These glasses change this world according to their own restrictions and due to the selections, classifications and valorisation the guidebook becomes a sort of prison and paradoxically takes away the freedom it provides (2012: 117). This doctoral thesis analyses old tourist guidebooks of the city of Zagreb. Since no systematic research of old travel guidebooks of Zagreb has been conducted yet, this dissertation is a valuable contribution to the fractography about Zagreb not only about the two periods they were written in, but also about some historical facts, persons and institutions. The corpus consists of 48 travel guidebooks in Croatian, English and German language as well as multilingual that were published during Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia that either describe Zagreb or include it as the one or one of many destinations. Out of 48 travel guidebooks 23 were published during the rule of Austria-Hungary and 25 of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia. Sixteen guidebooks were written in Croatian, seventeen in German, ten in English and there are five multilingual ones. The main objectives of this thesis were as follows: catalogue and describe the above-mentioned Zagreb guidebooks, systemize their content, establish a meta-lexicon of locations, sights, people and events so as to show the level of the guidebook informativeness about their authors’ viewpoints and establish any differences in relation to the national identity promotion in the two different political contexts on the one and domestic/foreign authors on the other hand. Some general remarks about the text-type were also made. Apart from being the time when the bourgeoisie was at its peak and the time when railway enabled cheaper travelling, the 19th century was the century of nations when nation-states were formed, motivated by the increased awareness of one’s national identity. Croatia and Zagreb were no exception in this regard. Moreover, the time when the analysed Zagreb guidebooks were written was also marked by a radical political change, and dramatic political events. The oldest guidebooks were published during the time Croatia was a part of Austria-Hungary and after 1862 when Zagreb became connected to the rest of Europe by railway which was a prerequisite for a more serious tourism activity. In 1918 Austro-Hungary fell apart and Croatia joined a newly formed country of south Slavic nations, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia The highest number of Zagreb guidebooks were published during this period. It was a turbulent and oppressive time marked by dramatic events from the assassination of five Croatian representatives in the Belgrade Parliament and the death of Stjepan Radić as the consequence of it (1928), the abolishment of the Vidovdan Constitution (1929), the implementation of the 6 th January Dictatorship (1929) and the assassination of the King in Marseille (1934). At the same time, due to the vicinity of the Adriatic coast, Zagreb began attracting more tourists (Srkulj, 1928: 5), several modern hotels such as Esplanade (1925) and Milinov (1929) were built which, apart from providing luxury accommodation, staged numerous popular social and cultural events. Consequently, the increased demand for guidebooks was met by the publishers – in the 1920s and 1930s about 20 Zagreb guidebooks were printed. Due to the fact that between 1862 and 1936 Croatia underwent a world war and a complete change of state it was a part of, i.e. from Austria-Hungary to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it was assumed that the perception of Croatian national identity changed which was then reflected in the aforementioned guidebooks. In this research guidebooks are treated as texts which provide an insight into the way national identity is constructed and possibly changed with the change of the political context. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are used to show how constituents of a national identity are created and how Zagreb is presented in the cultural sense as well as how personal views of an author can be incorporated in the text. Since some of the old travel handbooks included in this research have prominent individuals as their authors, distinguished either by their professions or their positions, their guidebooks may be used for purposes other the intended one, i.e. to help the traveller find his or her way when visiting Zagreb. Provided the guidebook was written by an author with the professional or social authority some of the guidebooks may be used as relevant sources which gathered and organised an array of different data about the city. These guidebooks than become history handbooks or mini-lexicons which comprised information about different aspects of city life in the two historical periods. Among the catalogued guidebooks, there are three authors who stand out, i.e. the city senator and finance professor Adolf Hudovski (1892), the head of the Croatian National Archives and the only aristocrat among guidebook writers Ivan Bojničić (1922) and the history professor and twice the mayor Stjepan Srkulj who wrote no less than twelve Zagreb guidebooks in Croatian, German, English and French (1928, 1930, 1936). This doctoral thesis consists of four parts. The first part deals with the theoretical background and begins with a brief overview of the most influential sociological theories on tourism because it is these theories that contributed to the perception of travel writing. Since tourism is a global phenomenon and a fast-growing global industry which produces discourse of its own resulting in a wide range of texts, the theoretical overview includes some theories of discourse, tourism discourse, text, linguistics and sociolinguistics. The first part also includes chapters about the history and politics in the two periods, Illyrian National Revival, development of the railway system and tourism in Zagreb. Although it was not one of the objectives in this dissertation, this chapter also includes a subchapter about the changes of hodonyms (Gr. hodos – street; onuma – name). Since no systematic or accurate scientific source of these changes was available and since there were many of them it was necessary to conduct this sub-research in order to understand the changes in the names of the streets and squares described in the guidebooks. The sixth chapter of the theoretical overview is dedicated to identity, national identity and its promotion since analysing how national identity is promoted in a popular culture genre is one of the core objectives of this thesis. Finally, the overview ends with the chapter about guidebook, its stigma, definition and research. The discourse analysis conducted in the thesis is extensive and can be divided into three parts. In the first the catalogued guidebooks are systematized and described, and an overview of the publishing houses and biographies of the known authors are provided. The second part is the metalexicon of locations which consists of 26 locations in the Lower and Upper City of Zagreb. These locations are included in the route tourists take when in Zagreb. The third part is the actual discourse analysis which lists the most important events, people and institutions mentioned in the guidebooks and compares the way they are presented in them. As the analysis showed, the way this is done is informative about the author’s opinions. Since there are few guidebooks written by foreign authors, and they mostly cover large geographical areas, Zagreb being one of many destinations, it may be argued that foreign authors were far less interested in promoting national or any other identity of the host country. Opposite to them, the domestic ones were eager to teach their readers about it not only because quite a number of them were professors, but also because the majority shared the same views on national identity markers stemming from the so called Illyrian period or the Croatian National Revival of the 1830s and the 1840s. While devising the metalexicon it was noticed that certain peculiarities/curiosities are repeated in several guidebooks written by different authors. The first one was the year 1527 as the year when the first printing press was brought to Zagreb by a German Hermagor Kraft. Since the year which is officially recognised as the year when the first printing press was introduced by the Jesuits is 1664. a subchapter lists the guidebooks which repeat this information. The next subchapter in the last part of the discourse analysis is about the drastic change in the perception of the work done on the cathedral by the two architects Hermann Bollé and Friedrich von Schmidt from one period to another. Finally, the last subchapter in the analysis shows how omission can be informative of the views held by the author. Interestingly, the vast majority of travelbooks do not mention either of the kings of the two Kingdoms, neither Francis Joseph I. who was the emperor of Austria-Hungary in the former of the two periods nor Aleksandar Karađorđević the king of Yugoslavia in the latter. The dissertation finishes with a general conclusion drawn from the whole research. Due to the rise of the Internet and the development of mobile telephones travel guidebook has become obsolete and superfluous. However, it remains an important object of modern culture and a symbol of the emancipation which in spite of all its imperfections and the limitations it imposed played an important role in individuating travel experiences (Koshar, 2000: 212). For almost two hundred years this object of mass production and a genre of popular culture has accompanied millions of different travellers all around the world. The 21st century has brought the mass media into everyday lives, especially of the young generations, transforming the way information is looked for when travelling. The tourist gaze is now present in other social practices and has ceased to be exclusive for tourism. People have become tourists in their own lives, regardless of whether they like it or not and whether they are aware of it or not. The tourist experience, as well as all other experience, is undergoing a thorough change (Urry and Larson: 2011: 97) which inevitably affects other media, especially the printed ones which, due to the rapid growth of digital technologies find it ever more difficult to survive. The difference between printed and digital forms lies the fact that the information online is plentiful, their source is unknown, they are disorganised and often unreliable because the authority and reliability cannot be established without naming the author. It is difficult to predict how new technologies will change the world, but it is evident that technological innovations emerge faster and ever more often. As soon one novelty is accepted a new one appears. How Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence will change the world and influence individuals. society and consequently travel is impossible to foresee, but it is certain that the changes will be huge and comprehensive. Old travel cultures will be changed with the new ones, and only those genres which successfully adapt to the change will survive.