MIMARA MUSEUM

On Roosevelt Square, the ^19th-century neo-Renaissance building stands out. Designed by Kuno Waidmann, it was originally a high school until the Ante and Wiltrud Topić Mimara collection was moved here to become a museum in 1987. However, the museum has a rocky history. Heavy accusations have been made by eminent art historians such as the American Thomas Hoving and the Italian Federico Zeri. According to their investigations, 95% of this collection consists of forgeries!

In the 1920s, the painter Mimara trained with German art historians, before becoming an art collector. During this period, a large number of minor works were stolen from small churches around the country. Mimara was known to try to sell paintings he passed off as Titian, Rubens or Giotto. To no avail. Then his marriage to an Italian aristocrat, Edina Pjelik de Ina, helped him buy many genuine religious works, while continuing to sell his copies. In 1929, he was extradited from France for the theft of the Zagreb Cathedral treasure. During the Second World War, Mimara the forger was Goering's artistic advisor. He moved to Berlin, where he bought works confiscated from Jews at low prices. In Munich, he is found rummaging through stocks of works stolen by the Nazis. Exiled after the war, he returned to Zagreb in the 1970s, ceding his enormous holdings to Croatia in exchange for an annual indemnity and two houses. He died in 1987.

You'll see works attributed to Lorenzetti, Raphael, Giorgione, Veronese, Caravaggio and Canaletto, Dutch masters (Van Goyen, Ruisdael), Flemish masters (Van der Weyden, Bosch, Rubens, Van Dyck), spanish (Velasquez, Murillo, Goya), German (Holbein, Liebermann, Leibl), English (Gainsborough, Turner, Bonington) and French (Georges de La Tour, Boucher, Chardin, Delacroix, Corot, Manet, Renoir, Degas). Drawings by Bronzino, Guardi, Claude Lorrain, Le Brun, Oudry, Greuze, Géricault, Friesz... Many other perfectly authenticated works have been honestly acquired by the Croatian state. A collection ranging from prehistory to the ^20th century, which can be discovered in the large interior spaces. The first floor features archaeology (Ancient Egypt, the Hellenistic period, Far Eastern art), decorative arts, a room dedicated to contemporary art exhibitions and a large tea room for events.