The Natural History Museum located within the Nikola Host Park was the first regional museum in the Rijeka area, founded in 1876 when Doctor Joseph Roman Lorenz designed its concept in accordance with Vienna’s Naturhistoriches Museum. Initially, the collection was an integral part of the City Museum, but since 1945 it has operated as an independent institution with rich holdings at its current location, within which there were a zoo and an aquarium until the 1960s.
Today, the Museum is oriented towards marine research and has a specialised library in the field of biology, geology and palaeontology. Visitors can enjoy the rich collections and permanent exhibition representing the geological past of the Adriatic, oceanographic research, minerals, marine invertebrates, sharks and rays, the “Aquarium” multimedia centre and reptiles and amphibians from the Rijeka area. http://www.visitrijeka.eu/What_To_See/Museums_and_Collections/Natural_History_Museum_Rijeka
The Maritime Museum was founded in 1949 at the initiative of the Yugoslav (today the Croatian) Academy of Sciences and Arts; since 1987 it was been a part of the Dubrovnik Museums. The main part of the holdings arose from numerous donations of Dubrovnik citizens to the Patriotic Museum in the first half of the 20th century and objects from the exhibition Dubrovnik Seafaring through the Ages, which was put on in 1941.
Since 1952, the museum has been located on the first and second floors of Fort St John (sv. Ivan). In the past the fort guarded the entrance into the city port, and was one of the most important points of the city's defences. The construction works started in 1346, today's appearance being completed at the end of the 16th century. In the 19th century it was rebuilt into two floors, and at the places where there had been artillery embrasures, windows were installed.
The museum systematically collects, studies, exhibits and publishes the museum material from the maritime past of the Dubrovnik region, all the way since Antiquity. Today it has holdings of over five thousand objects classified into fifteen collections. http://www.tzdubrovnik.hr/lang/en/get/muzeji/5591/maritime_museum.html