Bjelovar City Museum (Gradski muzej Bjelovar)

Gradski muzej Bjelovar, the city museum, is the main museum of Bjelovar and the surrounding Bilogora region. It was founded in 1949 as a regional museum, built up from collections gathered by local teachers and enthusiasts, and took its present name in 1962. By 1990 it held about 20,000 objects.

The museum occupies one of the most historic buildings in the town, at Trg Eugena Kvaternika 1. The two-storey building was put up in 1832 as the town's administrative seat, in the years when Bjelovar was a planned garrison town of the Military Frontier. Two events from its history are still remembered. On 12 September 1888 Emperor Franz Joseph I met Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer on the first floor, the encounter at which the emperor rebuked the bishop over a congratulatory telegram he had sent to Kiev. On 8 April 1941, during the Bjelovar uprising, the mayor proclaimed the Croatian state from the building's balcony.

The building was thoroughly renovated in 2009 and now has a restoration workshop and a library. The collections cover cultural history, natural history, archaeology and ethnography, with a department of recent history that includes the Homeland War. The ethnographic collection keeps the Bilogora folk costume. The art department collects works by artists from Bjelovar and its region, including the painter Nasta Rojc, after whom one of the galleries is named, Edo Murtić, Ivo Friščić and Minja Bosanac, the sculptors Vojin Bakić and Josip Zeman, and the photographer Tošo Dabac.

There are three exhibition spaces, Galerija Nasta Rojc, Mala galerija and Galerija Koridor, which host changing shows. The atrium has a small stage used for concerts, theatre, book launches and other events, so the museum also works as a cultural venue for the town.

The museum faces Bjelovar's central square and park, with its music pavilion, and lies a short walk from the cathedral of St Teresa of Ávila, so it is easy to fit into a walk around the town centre.