Traveling Back to Roman Times at the Archaeological Museum

Nov 7
Sasha

A nice attraction that lies in the middle of Old Town Zadar is the Archaeological Museum. The museum is situated across the street from the forum and St. Donat’s Church in an unassuming block building. Grant and I continually walked passed this place with our ice cream cones. So when Grant suggested we do something on Saturday, I said we should check out the museum. The building fooled us, I expected it to be only one floor with a few old items. Boy was I wrong! The museum’s exhibits cover 3 floors and is well laid out, with lots and lots of stuff to see.

The museum was established in November 1832 as part of the general museum of natural goods, industrial products, and antiquities. It became its own institution in 1880 and the first permanent exhibition was opened in 1897 in St. Donat’s Church. The museum moved into the building it’s now housed in 1974 and has an almost 200 year history. The artifacts displayed at the museum were collected not just from Zadar but from various sites in northern Dalmatia. This area is very rich in history and has been host to at least 4 different civilizations, ranging in time from 40,000 B.C. (Old and New Stone Ages) through the Copper, Bronze, and Iron Ages on up through the mediaeval period. A lot of the artifacts are pretty well-preserved.

 

(Zadar Archaeological Museum)

 

(The building is located across from the old Roman forum)

 

(The Roman forum contains ruins of pillars and market walls)

 

(One of the first displays we came across. Grant and I guessed it contained ancient sunglasses… or a cloak brooch)

 

(Long hall with display cases filled with antiquities)

 

(Ancient swords)

 

(Ancient decorative breast plate)

From the Roman settlement section:

 

(Fragment of an old marble stela)

 

(Portion of mosaic floor tile from a person’s home)

 

(Olive oil lamps from various Roman settlements. These were mass-produced as indicated by the brand stamp on the bottom)

 

(Game pieces from board games)

 

(Jewels from rings. All of these contain a carving or relief of a person or scenery)

 

(One of four imperial statues of Roman leaders, made of marble, from the island of Nin)

 

(Portion of a mediaeval church)

One thing I really enjoyed was their gift shop. This is not a typical gift shop where they order and sell things that look “old”. The gift shop is part of a restoration workshop which creates masking casts and copies of archaeological items and souvenirs from the collection. These are all handmade and look very similar to actual items displayed in the museum. As Grant and I have gotten into candle-making recently, we couldn’t resist buying a Roman oil lamp replica. We even got a tip from the gift shop worker who boxed up our purchase… she recommended we add a little sea salt when filling the lamp with olive oil as the flame will burn better. I responded with, “Really?! I didn’t know that!” and she said, “No one knows that! A lot of the Roman lamps that we discovered contained preserved grains of sea salt. And it works!”

So there you go, a useful “tip” if you have an olive oil lamp.

 

(The olive oil lamp we bought at the gift shop)

We rounded out our day at a nearby restaurant called Eat Me!

 

(Grant’s order of steak with peppercorn sauce and french fries)

 

(I ordered a seafood bouillabaisse… it was delicious)
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