In 1862, Zagreb city authorities started the initiative to build a network of city lighting and gasworks, and signed a contract with the Bavarian entrepreneur Ludwig August Riedinger on the introduction of street and private gas lighting. For the purpose of constructing a factory for gas lighting, Riedinger was given the construction site at the corner of Kukovićeva (today Hebrangova) and Gundulićeva Street. Following the expansion, this so-called ‘old gasworks’ spanned the entire area to Mažuranićev Square and Žerjavićeva Street. At first, the gas was produced by dry distillation of wood, and later on from hard coal.
 

•  On 31 October 1863, gas lighting in Zagreb was put into operation, in total 312 gas lights

As for the organisational part, the gas business was taken over by the Zagreb Gas Company in 1873. In 1900, the gasworks was taken over by the city municipality, and even today Gradska plinara Zagreb is owned by the City of Zagreb.
 

• On 22 April 1911, the old gasworks was closed

The ‘new’ gasworks started work on 10 April 1911. As it was one of the first to introduce the technology of vertical retorts, after it was put into operation, it required a range of revisions, modifications and upgrades (coke dry quenching unit, kiln and generator construction, etc.). These interventions were not efforts to merely improve and rationalise the operation of the plant, but were a technological step forward, and the experiences from the Zagreb gasworks were used in planning and construction of other similar gasworks. It had electrical hanging wagons for coal delivery to the kilns, and the same system for collection of coke, its own power station, water supply, modern buildings, state of the art gas processing plant, etc. Street gas lighting then got competition: electric lighting.
 

• In 1934, the last expansion of street gas lighting was done at Krešimirov Square and surrounding streets.

In the 1960s, gas consumption in the city was rising, as well as the distribution of natural gas, which in 1966 surpassed the amount of produced city gas on a yearly level. The so-called process of methanisation (ensuring technical prerequisites and reconnecting parts of the city network to natural gas) started in 1971, and between 800 and 2,600 households were connected to natural gas every year. Although completion of this process of methanisation was planned for the 1980s, it was delayed due to work that needed to be carried out and the investment into the gas network, as well as in household installations, and transformation of all user gas appliances. In 1990, 18,132 users were still connected to the city gas network, and on 11 November 1993 - following the connection of the last 6,173 users to natural gas in that same year - Zagreb mayor Branko Mikša symbolically closed the production of city gas.
 
Pursuant to the Gas Market Act, which is in line with the provisions of the Directive 2003/55/EU on the common rules for the internal market in natural gas, in 2008 Gradska plinara Zagreb d.o.o. formally separated the gas supply activity from gas distribution, a market activity taken over by the new company Gradska plinara Zagreb - Opskrba (City Gasworks Zagreb - Supply).