You probably don’t need us to tell you this, but there are a lot of reasons to visit Croatia. Thanks to a long shore that stretches down the gleaming Adriatic Coast, Croatian cities like Dubrovnik have been destinations for travelers throughout ancient history and modern times. Farther north, the country’s bustling capital, Zagreb, offers its own appeal. This Eastern European hub has much to give in terms of culture, art, and sightseeing — including the world’s first and foremost mushroom museum.
The Museum of Mushrooms is a must-visit for fungi fans. But if Zagreb city seems like an unusual location to find a museum that covers the world of mushrooms, from mycelium to fruit, let us explain.
This town is actually known for having some of the best museums in Europe — if you’re interested in the atypical, that is.
There’s the Museum of Broken Relationships, a brief but melancholy ode to connections lost or severed; blocks away, the Croatian Museum of Naive Art depicts fascinating work by self-taught creators; similarly, a Museum of Illusions displays bamboozling holographic shows.
Just a few blocks away from the city’s more pedestrian sites, like the famed Dolac Market, towers a spot for the mycology-minded. The Museum of Mushrooms offers an especially unique experience, and it comes as the culmination of more than 50 years of work by a local scientist.
Finding a passage into the world of mushrooms
At first glance, this Zagreb museum doesn’t yell for fanfare.
Situated in a grey, brutalist building less than a block away from the cultural city center, called Ban Jelačić Square, you’d be forgiven for passing it over the first time. (This is especially likely if you were to visit in the afternoon when the daily cannon shot booming from Grič Tower can take you by surprise.)
If you’ve paid attention to your Google Maps and avoided getting lost in the chaos of the main square, you’ll find yourself in front of a call box with the label “Muzej Gljiva.” It means Mushroom Museum in English.
Shroom hunting often requires you to look low. Alice fell down into the rabbit hole. This adventure, however, is going to send you up to the building’s second floor. There, over 1,500 types of mushrooms stand to greet you.
Mushrooms on display
As common lore goes, there’s no other museum in the world that offers access to this many examples of mushrooms.
The samples have been carefully collected, kept, and exhibited by the late Professor Romano Božac, a mycologist and agronomist who first began his catalog around 1969. Throughout the course of his life, Božac was credited with discovering 53 new species of mushrooms, all of which are on display throughout the museum. (Along with plenty of others.)
Božac finds include a species like Tuber donnagotta, a type of truffle.
The freeze-dried specimens of fungi, which can take over 200 hours of work per fruiting body to preserve, are organized by species of mushrooms. Each case is packed with vibrantly colored members of fungal families, from common boletes to rarities like Amanita phalloides, the death cap.
Remarkably, the thousand-plus models are in near pristine condition thanks to the care that’s gone into sheltering them. Air-tight glass cabinets are pressure and moisture-controlled to reduce any degradation of the specimens.
Some of the species displays, such as those for various families of shelf fungi, take on more life-like appearances. Old logs are scattered between various glass boxes; they’re studded with mushrooms suspended in time and allow guests a closer view of the interesting subjects.
Visitors to the museum won’t be able to smell, touch, or taste any mushrooms here, especially considering the amount of toxic types on display. Still, the staff that has maintained the museum since Božac’s death in 2020 are knowledgeable and happy to elaborate on a shared infatuation with fungi.
Many of the displays have brief descriptions, though a lot of it is in Croatian. Depending on how deeply you like to observe, it’s possible to see all of the various sections in under two hours.
Zagreb’s mushroom museum is a must-see
Mostly, visitors to Zagreb’s Museum of Mushrooms can ponder and enjoy the myriad of shapes and colors that make up the fungi kingdom. A trip into Božac’s display offers a broad perspective of nature’s incredible variations. Each grouping provides a stunningly comprehensive example of how these families relate in physical traits, environment, and functions.
All things considered, a trip to this museum is also an incredible tribute to a life spent in the service of shrooms.
Opening Hours: Check Google for current hours
Cost: Approximately 3 Euro
Address: Bana Josip Jelačić Square 3, 2 floor, Zagreb, 10000, Croatia
2 Splavnica ul Zagreb, 10000, Croatia
