Its many museums, galleries, concert venues, theaters and various festivals, make Zagreb the cultural center of Croatia.
If you want to explore Zagreb’s museums, our recommendation would be to start from the Upper Town. In that part of the city we would recommend The Zagreb City Museum, The Meštrović Atelier, Naïve Art Museum and Museum of Broken Relationships. Once you have explored “The Upper Town museums” you should pay a visit to the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Mimara Museum and the Museum of Contemporary art, which are all located in the downtown area.
The Zagreb City Museum exhibition shows the history and development of the City of Zagreb, from prehistory (traces of which were recently uncovered under the very building of the museum itself) to the present day. www.mgz.hr
The Meštrović Atelier houses art pieces of famous sculptor Ivan Meštrović. He donated the house he used to live in, together with 300 sculptures (in stone, bronze, wood and plaster), drawings and lithographs, to the Republic of Croatia.
www.mdc.hr/mestrovic
Croatian Naive Art Museum keeps works of Croatian naive expression of the 20th century. It is located in the 18th century Raffay Palace in the Upper Town. The museum houses 1500 works of art – paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, mainly by Croatian but also by other world known naïve artists. www.hmnu.org
Museum of Broken Relationships is a museum dedicated to failed love relationships. Its exhibits are personal objects left over from former lovers which are accompanied by brief descriptions. www.brokenships.com
Museum of Arts and Crafts with its 160,000 exhibits is a national-level museum for artistic production and the history of material culture in Croatia.
www.muo.hr
The Mimara Museum houses the personal art collection of Ante and Wildrud Topić Mimara, which consists of 3,750 works of art of various techniques and materials, and different cultures and civilizations.
Since its very beginnings, the Museum of Contemporary Art has exhibited and acquired artworks by those Croatian and international artists who revealed intriguing and high-quality artistic aspirations, including a new or different visual language. The Museum’s collections document the beginnings and the logical evolution of certain artistic tendencies, as well as their direct or indirect impact on the production that followed. At the same time, the collections witness the topicality of Croatian artistic production in particular time periods, in their relation to the parallel currents in European and global art. www.msu.hr