“To my beloved son Tomislav, King of the Croats.” With these words, Pope John X began a letter to the Croatian King Tomislav in 925, on the eve of the first Split Church Council.

The main event in Croatia marking the 1100th anniversary of the Croatian Kingdom, the exhibition “In the Beginning There Was a Kingdom”, financially sponsored by the Croatian Government, opened on 16 October 2025 at the Klovićevi dvori – Klovic Court – Gallery. It contains proudly presented key moments in Croatian history to visitors using more than 400 artifacts.

The exhibition’s author Dr. Sc. Dino Milinovic noted: “This exhibition was truly a unique effort, a unique effort and it would not have happened if it weren’t for a whole series of people who put up their backs, who showed a truly enviable dose of enthusiasm, starting with the directors of all the institutions that participated in the organisation and the people who had to carry out the exhibition. From the very idea, from the beginning of this year, so there wasn’t even much time, to the very opening of this exhibition, so much had to be done to ensure something that would be at the level of expectations that everyone had from us. That effort was exceptional. Such exhibitions usually take two to three years to be created, and I think that in this year we have managed to satisfactorily create an exhibition that is interdisciplinary, which, first of all, unites these institutions that we have talked about, such as the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments, the Croatian State Archives, the National and University Library and finally the Croatian History Museum. I am saying all this because I wanted to tell you that more than a hundred people worked on the exhibition, from curators in these institutions to the cataloguers, about a hundred authors, historians, art historians, and literary historians. In this way, we obtained a reference material for Croatian history that includes art artifacts and things that are important for the history of literature, so we obtained a material that is actually a springboard for new research.

It was an effort to tell a story that seemed worth telling, which for us connected 11 centuries of our history, and presents an education for memory…”

The exhibition spans three floors and about thirty halls, and the author points out that for each hall they found a theme that they felt was important for understanding Croatian history.

“It is mostly a chronologically arranged exhibition, but it is primarily based on thematic units, be they historical-political, cultural-social or artistic. Artistic artifacts, paintings, sculptures as well as documents that accompany the most important moments in Croatian history are equally represented here,” said Milinovic.”

The exhibition will remain open until February 15, 2026, and after Zagreb, it will be presented at the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments in Split.

The exhibition is arranged in thirty halls on three floors, all divided into thematic units, designed in accordance with the dominant political, social, religious and cultural phenomena that marked certain periods of Croatian history.

The exhibition brings the most significant artifacts and documents that testify to the continuity of Croatian statehood, and from the multitude of key monuments, the Višeslav baptismal font stands out, which has undeniable symbolic, civilizational and artistic value. Visitors can also see the most significant inscriptions with the names of Croatian princes, kings and queens, among which the inscription from the sarcophagus of Queen Jelena stands out, which was used to reconstruct part of the ruling dynasty of the Trpimirovics in the 10th century. There is also the Baška Tablet, the first written monument in the Glagolitic script and the vernacular, then Ladislav’s cloak from the Treasury of the Zagreb Cathedral, examples of stone sculpture by Juraj Dalmatinac, Ivan Dunkovic, Nikola Firentinac and Franjo Vranjanin-Laurana, the tombstone of Zagreb Bishop Luka Baratin, documents testifying to the devastation of the country after the defeat in the Battle of Krbava (1493), a special room dedicated to the 19th century and the Croatian National Revival, and also a special part of the exhibition on the ground floor that is entirely dedicated to the ruling personality of King Tomislav and his phenomenon that developed over the centuries and culminated in the great jubilee in 1925.

The entire exhibition brings a powerful story about Croatian history and tradition but also serves as a starting point for new research and new creativity, and combines the past and the present, tradition and modernity. Ina Vukic

Some more images of historical artefacts of Croatia that can be seen at the exhibition: