Dubrovnik Natural History Museum was found in
1872. In 1872. Museo Patrio was established and based on a private
collection by pharmacist and ship owner Antun Dropac. It quickly
grew in size between 1882 and 1917, when famous Dubrovnik naturalist
Baldo Kosić acquired 1117 specimens from private collections and
from various ship captains.
Dubrovnik Natural museum owns
some extraordinary valuable exhibits, as algae herbarium collected
by naturalists Matija Botteri and Marija de Cattani, otter,
Mediterranean monk seal and Leatherback sea turtle caught in 1894.
in Adriatic sea. One of the more attractive exhibits beside Thresher
shark (fox shark) and Smooth hammerhead is a large tuna (head and
tail) caught by the end of 19th century in Hodilj near Ston.
Besides historic value, the collection is a valuable display of a
Dubrovnik region's fauna and a constant shift in biological
diversity. Museum also owns specimens of the extinct species that
once resided in Dubrovnik area.
Through the efforts of the president of the Chamber of Commerce and
Crafts in Dubrovnik, pharmacist and naturalist Antun Dropac (1810 –
1882), in the second half of the 19th century, a campaign was launched
to collect materials needed to equip technical and natural science
cabinets, as a prerequisite for the establishment of the Technical
School. With the help of fellow citizens and institutions, Drobac
intensively collected both his private, naturalistic and
cultural-historical collection, as well as the collection of the Chamber
of Commerce, which consisted mainly of minerals. Although more subjects
than needed were collected, the Viennese government rejected the request
to establish a school. Drobac then comes up with the idea of founding a
local museum. The Native Museum (Museo Patrio) was founded in 1872, and
officially opened the following year in the large hall of the Municipal
Palace. After Dropč's death in 1882, amateur naturalist, collector and
preparator Baldo Kosić (1829 – 1918) was chosen as the manager of the
Museum. During his work, the study of Dubrovnik's fauna flourished.
Almost complete collections of birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and
mammals from the Dubrovnik area have been collected.
After
Kosić's death, due to the large number of natural history and other
objects collected by the Museum, there was a need for a new space. In
1932, the museum moved to the newly renovated premises of the first
floor of the fortress of St. Ivan and changes its name to "Dubrovočki
muzej". Natural history, cultural-historical, archaeological,
ethnographic and maritime collections are separated into departments.
After the Museum acquired other exhibition spaces in 1950, the Natural
History Department occupies the entire first floor of the fortress of
St. Ivan.
As early as 1952, a decision was made to move the
Natural History Department to the Crijević-Pucić Palace, and the
department grew into a Natural History Museum. Due to the intensive
collection of new material and the creation of dioramas, even that space
soon became insufficient. In 1957, the Museum merged with the JAZU
Biological Institute into a cultural and educational institution, and
then moved to the building of the former Benedictine monastery in
Lokrum, where it was officially opened to visitors in 1962. The 1979
earthquake significantly damaged the monastery building, so the Museum
is closed, and the collections are stored in the fortress of St. Ivan.
Not long after that, the Museum was left without professional staff.
At the beginning of 2009, the Dubrovnik Museum of Natural History
was re-established and officially opened in Andrović Palace in March of
the same year.