NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ZADAR (NARODNI MUSEJ ZADAR)

In Croatia, the first regional museum was established in Zadar in 1832 in the municipality's historic buildings, to preserve and present to the public the entire Dalmatian heritage, plant and animal species, the region's history and its cultural and ethnological activities. World War II devastated much of the National Museum's exhibition space. In 1945, works and objects were brought back from storage, and the archaeology department was relocated to a separate building. In 1948, the Fine Arts Gallery was created, followed in December 1962 by the People's Revolution Museum. In the early 1960s, all existing museums were centralized by the administration of the National Museum Zadar, which moved into a new building. In the 1970s, the museum was entrusted with overseeing the exhibition of the historical and ethnographic collections of the island of Iž, in the Zadar archipelago. The permanent and temporary exhibitions, together with the temporary exhibitions (City Lodge), felt more than a little cramped in the Rector's Palace. An architectural redevelopment program was delivered in 2017 with the inauguration of the National Heritage Museum.

The Natural History Department (Prirodoslovni odjel), in the south wing, houses one of the oldest national collections. Among the twenty-five preserved collections are the herbarium bequeathed by Domenico Pappafave in the ^19th century, an important collection for the study of malacology (mollusc shells) belonging to Blaž Cvitanović, and a collection of fish and crustaceans catalogued by Ivo Franković (190 specimens). In 1990, Ante Savković's collection of moths and owls (300 specimens) was added to the permanent exhibition.

Fine Arts Gallery (Galerija umjetnina). Another refurbished wing offers a beautiful, light-filled space for collections of icons, paintings and sculptures by old masters, works by modern and contemporary Croatian artists, and photographs, notably the black-and-white images of Ante Brkan. Not to be missed is the graphic work of Ivan Palčić, a pupil of painters Bela Čikoš Sesija or Vlaho Bukovac, who became close to Zagreb's bohemian scene and was a friend of Antun Gustav Matoš.

Ethnological department (Područna etnografska). Historical, cultural and popular collections from Veli and Mali Iz, and the islands of the Zadar archipelago.