Museum of Ancient Glass – Zadar

One special place will delight all lovers of art and history – especially when it comes to glass and the craft of glassmaking itself. The Museum of Ancient Glass in Zadar opened in 2009 in the Cosmacendi Palace. The palace itself was built in 1877 on the Moro bastion, and was later renovated and extended according to the design of architect Branko Silađin.

This special, we might even say unique, museum holds an incredible collection of around 5000 different glass objects from antiquity. The glass items were found at various sites in the area around Zadar, Nin and Starigrad. Some specimens were also found at the foot of Velebit and near Benkovac.

The museum as a tourist attraction

The museum as it is today is very interesting to many guests in our town. It is visited not only in the summer season, but throughout the whole year, and visitor reactions are more than good.

The museum can also boast a virtual exhibition of specially selected glass material from other Croatian sites. These items are kept in the archaeological museums in Zagreb, Split, Osijek and Pula, as well as in the Glass Museum in Murano. Still, everyone who visits our museum in Zadar can view the exhibits in digital form, thus getting a complete picture of that period.

Besides the mentioned exhibits, we must point out that our museum also has a library with a reading room, which mostly houses specialist literature. We regularly enrich the literature with new publications, so we can boast that we currently have more than 700 bound volumes, as well as around 420 volumes of periodicals.

Presentation of the museum

We begin the presentation on the first floor with a display of the glass trade and trade routes. Here we want to show glass objects that were imported, as well as glass items of local manufacture with relief stamps. This is followed by the theme of the use of glass in cosmetics, pharmacy and medicine.

In the largest hall we show numerous complete pieces of glass material and the use of glass in burial rites – glass urns, balsamaria and lids. Besides the reconstruction of several ancient burial methods, a series of groups of glass grave goods is displayed, along with three Liburnian tombstones and six small funerary tituli.

Next comes a walk through a small hall, dominated by items of glass jewellery: rings, hairpins and beads, as well as necklaces, bracelets and pendants.

The permanent exhibition ends with rare examples of ancient glassmaking. In this hall, on wall-mounted screens, there is a virtual display of a selection of material from the Zadar area kept in the Glass Museum in Murano, as well as a selection of glass material from Croatian museums.

We can say that all the themes are very interesting and present the use and importance of glass in the best possible way, from the past right up to today.

If you find the time – while you are in Zadar, be sure to visit the Museum of Ancient Glass as well.