Zagreb City Museum will celebrate the 90th birthday of the Zagreb Zoo with the exhibition titled Zoo in Zagreb from 1925 to 2015. Visitors will be able to see how the ZOO looked twenty, sixty or ninety years ago. The exhibition is open up to the 31st October.
The Zagreb City Zoo was opened on June 27, 1925, in Maksimir Park, due to the advocacy of Mijo Filipovic, the founder, with the help of the then Mayor of Zagreb, Vjekoslav Heinzel. The first few years could be called the Romantic period, since the garden was formed – with the acquisition of animals, the expansion of the grounds and the building of the houses – with the unstinting support of the citizenry, of friends and convinced enthusiasts, arguing for and supporting the initiatives urging the need for the existence in Zagreb of such a cultural and educational institution.
From the very outset and during its ninety years of existence, the Zoological Garden has attracted a large number of curiosity seekers, Zagreb people and visitors to the city. At the same time, it has gone through periods of greater and lesser good fortune. The current exhibition, created on research into original archival records, extensive existing photographic documentation by professionals and amateurs, objects collected from other, similar, establishments and in collaboration with the Zoological Garden of the City of Zagreb, will give ample evidence of all this. Through the story of the Zoological Garden told through the exhibition medium, the coexistence of people and animals and of animals and their keepers will be followed, taking in the visitors, the wardens responsible for the working of the garden and their many assistants, thanks to whom the garden was constantly updated.
It will present all the attractions of the garden, the arrival of the first exotic animals and the recreation of the context of their lives in the garden – the first monkey, the first lion, the first elephant, the first giraffe, the first sea lions and more interesting tales.
