There isn’t a single museum in Zagreb, one might be so bold to say the world, that strikes a more personal note than the Museum of Broken Relationships that found its home in the upper town.
It holds artifacts of deeply personal nature that speak of an universal experience- that of love and loss. Be it an axe used to destroy the furniture of your lesbian ex-lover, an old wedding photo with a date of the divorce inscribed on it or a shoe of a prostitute you used to be in love in high school, every item tells a story, no matter how different, one can relate to.
Museum of Broken Relationships holds items people around the world donated that tell a story of their past relationships and how they ended. The idea was conceived by Olinka Visnica and Drazen Grubisic, a former couple themselves, as a way for people to let go of their past in a more meaningful way.
‘Each item is special’, says Drazen, ‘Each one has its own energy and a story to tell and means a lot to their owners. This way they can let go of them without destroying or trowing something of value to them.’
The museum started off as a small traveling exhibition but would get larger with each city they visited. After five years of traveling the museum had so many items that Olinka and Drazen decided to make a permanent residency in Zagreb, where the story started.
Now set up in renovated Kulmer’s palace, Cirilmetodska street 2, the museum holds around a thousand items (with new ones being added all the time) they periodically mix and mach to keep the exhibition fresh, with occasional traveling shows.
The museum has five rooms where the items are displayed, each with its own running theme, a gift shop and a bar that hosts live concerts almost every week.
The museum provides an experience everybody is moved by, be it from the stories of others or evoked memories of their own, and items they would use to tell a story of love lost. It a must on every tourist’s list of thing to do and see in Zagreb.
The museum is opened every day from 9h to 21h, and the entry fee is 25 kn.