Korčula Town Museum (Gradski muzej Korčula)

Gradski muzej Korčula, the Town Museum, faces St Mark's Square in the centre of Korčula's walled old town, across from the cathedral. It is housed in the Gabrielis Palace, a Renaissance town house of the 16th century built for one of Korčula's noble families, and it sets out to tell the cultural and economic history of the island from prehistory to the present day.

The collection is arranged over several floors of the palace. Archaeology comes first, with finds that reach back to the Greek period, when colonists settled the island they called Korkyra Melaina, Black Corfu. The best-known document of that time is the Lumbarda Psephisma, a stone decree of the 3rd or 4th century BC from Lumbarda, at the eastern tip of the island, recording how settlers from Issa, today's Vis, founded a colony and divided its land. It is considered the oldest written document found in Croatia; the original is kept in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, and the museum in Korčula presents it in its own display.

Other rooms follow the trades that made Korčula. Stonemasonry and shipbuilding were the island's great skills for centuries, and the museum shows tools, models and carved stone that explain them. Furniture, textiles and household objects show how the town's families lived, and there is a section on the Moreška, the sword dance that Korčula still performs in summer. In 2024 the museum also presented to the public a first printed edition of the medieval Statute of Korčula, published in Venice in 1643.

The museum is a short visit and works well as an introduction before walking the old town's lanes, the cathedral of St Mark and the Land Gate tower. The same institution also runs the Kula Kopnenih vrata, the Land Gate tower at the main entrance to the old town, and the Marko Polo Centre, and a combined ticket covers all three, which makes it easy to fit the town's history into a single morning.