Dvorana Bepo

There is a quiet distinction between Dvorana Bepo and the arena down the road which was built specifically for the national team. This is not a monument; it is a working room tucked inside the grounds of Gimnazija "Fran Galović". The wooden parquet floor has seen more than just schoolchildren since it was laid in 2007.

It started life as the school’s own sports hall, a functional block designed by the firm Tehnika. That construction project gathered enough local pride to secure a Mies van der Rohe award from the European Commission. But the name told a different story for fourteen years. It was simply the Sportska dvorana Gimnazije "Fran Galović", a name that changed in August 2021. The city decided to honour Josip "Bepo" Samaržija, a coach who taught here and won medals with the Yugoslav women's handball team. The hall took his nickname, a gesture of respect in a city that knows the value of hard work.

RK Podravka plays here. They bring the professional floor into a space that also hosts wrestling tournaments and karate bouts. The Croatian national handball side has also used it for EHF qualifiers, though the crowd is never huge. What fills the seats on other nights is often music. Major regional artists like Zdravko Čolić have played here, finding a way to turn a sports hall into a concert space without needing a stage built for the occasion. It is a place that pays for a sloppy opening by closing with a round of applause that feels personal, not theatrical. It stands on Ulica Dr. Željka Selingera, close enough to hear the traffic from the centre of Koprivnica, but once the doors are locked, it belongs to the players and the performers who walk through them.