Fritzi Palace – Museum of Lošinj

Fritzi Palace is a nineteenth-century town house in Mali Lošinj, the main town of the island of Lošinj in the Kvarner archipelago, and it is the home of the Museum of Lošinj. The building is an example of the architecture that grew up in Mali Lošinj in the age of sail, when the town prospered through shipbuilding and maritime trade and local captains and shipowners built comfortable houses near the harbour. The palace later served as a guesthouse, and today it is one of the town's main cultural venues, where an art collection and temporary exhibitions are shown in elegant rooms.

The museum's permanent display is built around two collections. The first, known as the Piperata Collection, is a group of about thirty paintings by old masters, mostly from the Italian Baroque, assembled by Giuseppe Piperata, a local physician and art lover, who gave it to the town. Seeing a coherent collection of works of this kind on a small island is unexpected, and the paintings give an idea of the taste of educated people in the Adriatic in the nineteenth century. The second is the collection of Croatian art put together by Andro Vid Mihičić and given to the museum, which presents paintings and sculptures by Croatian artists from the early twentieth century to the 1970s. It offers an overview of the development of modern Croatian art and helps put the old masters in context.

On the ground floor, a gallery called the Fritzi Gallery hosts temporary exhibitions throughout the year, with works by contemporary artists and thematic shows that change several times a season. This means that there is usually something new to see even if you have been before. The rooms are of a modest size, and the museum can be seen in an hour or so, which makes it a good stop in the middle of the day, when the sun is strongest, or on a wet day.

The museum is part of a wider cultural offer in Mali Lošinj. The Apoxyomenos Museum, which houses a famous ancient Greek bronze statue of an athlete found in the sea off the island in the 1990s, is a short walk away and is one of the most important museums in the Adriatic. The port with its colourful houses, the narrow streets of the old town and the villas in Čikat bay, built when the island was a fashionable health resort in the late nineteenth century, are all listed in this guide, along with a walking route called the Footpath of Vitality.

Opening hours vary with the season, with longer hours in summer, so check the current schedule. The museum suits art lovers, families and anyone interested in the history of the island. It is a quiet, cool space that provides a calm break from the sun and the waterfront crowds.