The beginnings of the collection of archaeological material were recorded on January 15, 1911, when the grand master of the Brethren of the Croatian Dragon Society and first director of the City Museum Emilij pl. Laszovski accepted a medieval ceramic vessel and a stone mortar excavated during rebuilding works at the city hall in Kušević Street.
The foundation of the collection is composed of finds discovered during archaeological investigations carried out in the 1990s within the heritage complex in which the Zagreb City Museum itself is located; these are objects that reflect the past of the Free and Royal City of Gradec (1242-1850). At the same time as the foundation of the collection, 1997, Zagreb City Museum carried out the first rescue archaeological investigations in the historical core of the city, at the site New City Gate in Opatička Street. This was the beginning of successful collaboration between museum professionals and the monument protection department.
After that came a series of archaeological operations within the protected historic urban centre of the city of Zagreb, which brought to the light of day numerous material testimonies of past times, which essentially fill in the image of the past of Zagreb.
Particularly deserving of reference are the several-year investigation in Grič Park, the research in St Mark’s Square and at the site of today’s mall Centar Kaptol, within the Upper Town High School of today, alongside the church of the BVM in Remete and so on.
These investigations revealed
- segments of the settlement of the Old Iron Age (8/7 centuries BC),
- they defined parts of the medieval city fortifications,
- found graves concerning which there were no data in the historical sources,
- objects that show there were trade links with the Mediterranean and the central European cultural circles,
- the complex of an Angevin palace of the 14th century, and
- objects that reflect the life, lifestyle and artistic and craft achievements of the one-time inhabitants of Gradec and Kaptol.
Among other things, particular mention should be made of parts of ceramic stoves discovered in a workshop that made stoves in Nova Ves from the end of the 15th to the early 16th century.
Furthermore, of objects made outside Croatia, one should particularly mention a jug found in Grič Park, made in Italian workshops in the mid-14th century, which, as luxury product of the time, tells of a well-off owner. Then there is, for example, a majolica jug, fond in the courtyard of the ecclesiastical mansion of Kaptol 8, the source of which can be found in the workshops of central Italy in the 16th century.
Numismatic finds (coins, medals of the saints) are exceptionally valuable. Interpretation of them allows the historical image of central Europe to be reflected in today’s Zagreb space. From among them we can pick out one specimen of Greek coinage from the area of Zagreb, struck in Sicily after 288 BC, in the Greek colony of Messina. Since it was later perforated, it was probably used as a pendant in the Middle Ages, and we can thus think of it within the context of costumery.
The many items of ceramic tableware and kitchen vessels are precious as a source for the reconstruction of the everyday life of the onetime inhabitants of today’s Zagreb. The jugs and pots discovered in the well at Medvedgrad for example provide prototypes for the stylistic and morphological analysis of vessels from the time before 1590, when an earthquake brought life in this burg to a total standstill.
Although a large number of objects also belong to later periods of history, like coins from the 16th century, vessels from the 17th and 18th centuries and a pipe from the 19th, the archaeological context in which they were found mean that they must be kept within this collection.
