Museums and curiosities of Zagreb

Monday 8 – Tuesday 9 July 2024

We had a long list of places we wanted to visit and so we approached our task with vigour.  Many of them appealled because they addressed unusual topics.

There were a few that we couldn’t visit because they were shut or too far away, such as the Mushroom Museum or the Museum of Cannabis! the State Archives, the Naieve Art Museum or the Art Gallery that is housed in a cemetary. So there is still more to do next time.

What we did see kept us very busy.

Museum of Broken Relationships is a collection of donated annotated artefacts that captured pivotal moments in the breakdown or end of relationships from people all around the world.

The Chocolate Museum was interesting and came with a tasting box that you sampled from as you moved through the various rooms explaining the history, manufacturing and culinary uses of chocolate.

Nine Views is a double act.  In 1971 Ivan Kozaric created a 2m diameter bronze sculpture of the sun placed in Zagreb city.  In 2004, artist Davor Preis secretly placed nine scale planets (yep pluto) in scale accurate locations around the city.  They measure about 1-2 cm each. It took years before anyone noticed these tiny plaques. We found two. 

Museum of Hangovers is the product of some young lads dream to put all the shit they did on crazy nights out in one place.  It was moderately interesting and we were tempted with the offer of a free shot of Rajika at the end. 

The Nikolai Tesla Technical Museum At 3pm everyday it includes a lecture about the inventions of Tesla and a tour of the mine under the building.  Lots of stuff that I didn’t really understand.

Gallery of Contemporary Art was impressive, big and had more stuff I didn’t really understand.  There were six exhibitons on and we only paid 7 Euros each – very good value for two uni students.

The Meteorlogical Post in the Zrinjevac Park is a fancy 135 year old weather vane that records the temperature, barometric pressure and rainfall for Zagreb.  I actually saw residents pop up to check the temp as numbers rose to 34C. 

We did quite a few more things on our last day in Zagreb – but we have to have some stories for when we get home so we had one more sleep and then headed for the bus station.