As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, visitors are returning en mass to Croatian museums. According to data from the Museum Documentation Centre (MDC), throughout 2022, 35.6% more art lovers visited Croatian museums than they did in 2021 – with a total of slightly less than 3.5 million visitors (3,458,338). Nevertheless, attendance is still 34 percent lower than it was in the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.
The most visited of the Croatian museums last year was the Archaeological Museum of Istria, under which the collections in the Pula Arena stand out the most, having been visited by 509,778 people, a very encouraging 200,000 more than the year before. This attendance brings the numbers for this museum back to those from 2018 and 2019, and the jump can be attributed to the growth in the overall number of tourists visiting and discovering Istria.
In second place are the Museums of Hrvatsko Zagorje with 301,508 visitors, which is a noticeable increase of 13.4% when compared to the reference year of pre-pandemic 2019.
The third most visited of the Croatian museums is Zagreb’s Nikola Tesla Technical Museum with 259,493 visits and an increase of 33% when compared to 2019. Compared to 2021, however, the growth in terms of the number visitors has been even greater, as high as 136 percent.
The Museum Documentation Centre writes that this museum achieved this impressive growth through numerous events and educational activities – 25 open exhibitions and 4,769 professional tours. In addition, the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum opened its doors to other museums across the City of Zagreb that were left without space due to the damage left by the March 2020 earthquake.
Dubrovnik’s museums are in fourth place with 235,526 visitors, while in fifth place is the Museum of the City of Split, which, together with Diocletian’s cellars, attracted 210,103 visitors in total.
There was also a significant increase in the number of students who, compared to last year, visited various Croatian museums almost four times more often. This can be attributed, the MDC explains, to the cessation of the application of epidemiological measures put in place back during the pandemic, and the most active in working with young people were the Museums of Hrvatsko Zagorje, which were visited by 77,237 children from primary and secondary schools.
That museum is followed by the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum, in whose programmes 49,257 children participated, while in third place came the Museum of the City of Zagreb, which attracted 23,965 of the youngest visitors last year.
Croatian museums and galleries were visited by 912,594 tourists, or 386,116 more than the previous year, almost two-thirds of which were accounted for by just three of the country’s most regularly visited museums – the Archaeological Museum of Istria, the Museum of the City of Split and the Museums of Hrvatsko Zagorje. Interestingly, the Dubrovnik museums located in Croatia’s most famous tourist destination still don’t keep any records of foreign visitors.
If we look at the cities individually, Croatian museums are still the most visited in Zagreb, where, despite the fact that almost half of Zagreb’s museum houses are closed for constructive renovation, 22% of all museum visits at the national level were recorded.
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