6 History Museums in Rijeka That You Shouldn't Miss

THE MARITIME AND HISTORY MUSEUM OF THE CROATIAN LITTORAL has been one of the most important meeting-places of culture in the city of Rijeka for the last four decades. With its permanent display and many valuable exhibitions from its own holdings or of other Croatian museums it takes part in tracing the important events connected with the history and culture of Rijeka, Primorje-Gorski Kotar County and Croatia, and so it reveals small parts of the insufficiently known past. With its research into the complex materials (of archaeological, ethnographical, artistic, cultural-historical and maritime-historical characteristics), in a time span from prehistory to the Modern Age, with expert and scientific methods it processes, systemises and presents the role and development of the whole of the social organism in the region of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, the Croatian Littoral and the city of Rijeka and points out its specific and interactive relationship with other European centres over a thousand year period, with the aim of becoming a dynamic, open and educative institution. With its headquarters in the building of the former Governor’s Palace, a protected cultural monument, as exhibit number 1, the museum with an interdisciplinary approach offers the consideration–identification, familiarisation and understanding of the character of the people and places, memories and myths, uncovering the identity, which represents an unbreakable link of the past and present.

Construction of the Governor’s Palace began in 1892 during the period of Governor Lajos Batthyány's rule and based on the design of one of the leading Hungarian architects of the time, Alajos Hauszmann who had already proved himself on the project of the King's Palace and the Parliament building in Budapest. On a surface area of 12 000 m² a simple and monumental corpus of the detached neo-Renaissance palace was built based on models of the famous Palladi's works, a French park with two fountains and balustrades made of wrought iron and two-leaf doors with sentry boxes.Today, the Maritime and Historical Museum of the Croatian Littoral can be found at the palace founded in 1961 which contains a maritime, cultural and historical, ethnographical and archaeological department. Part of the exhibits of original pieces from the Governor’s palace are presented in lounges, including the furniture and objects of the art crafts belonging to the periods from the Renaissance to Historicism as well as a collection of portraits of the most notable Rijeka citizens.

The museum Includes eleven collections: fine arts, arts & crafts, numismatics, valuable objects, medals, arms from the Second World War and from the Croatian War of Independence, a collection of theatre and film material, philately, photography, press and technical collections.

Immerse yourself in the rich historical heritage of Rijeka at our Pivnica Cont - Time Machine in the city of Rijeka.