The construction of the Vucedol Culture Museum near the eastern city of Vukovar, dedicated to that Eneolithic culture, started in 2004 and was completed in May 2014, when work on its permanent collection started, the Culture Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, noting that it had invested HRK 15 million in the project.
The museum is part of the Ilok-Vukovar-Vucedol project that also included renovation work on Odescalchi Castle, on a Franciscan monastery, and on parks in the historical centre of Ilok, as well as renovation work on Vukovar's Baroque-style centre, the Eltz Castle complex and the Vukovar City Museum.
The project was financed with a loan from the Council of Europe Development Bank worth HRK 169.7 million, state funds in the amount of HRK 56.9 million and an a additional 156.2 million from the Culture Ministry.
"The 19-room museum, covering an area of some 1,200 square metres, will feature not only the archeological finds from one of the most important archeological sites in Europe, but a reconstruction of the Vucedol culture to which the beginnings of the cultures of today's European nations are attributed," the ministry said.
The authors of the museum project are Aleksandar Durman of the Archeology Department of the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Vukovar City Museum director Ruzica Maric.
Durman and archeologist Mirela Hutinec are the authors of the Vucedol Culture Museum collection.
The museum is considered to be the basis of a new, multifunctional project, the Vucedol Archeological Park, which is being developed by the ministries of culture, tourism and regional development and EU funds.
The Vucedol archeological site provides an insight into how civilisations and cultures developed at the time of the first Indo-European settlers in the region around 6000 BC (the Baden, Kostolac and Vucedol cultures) and into their everyday life and customs.
Those cultures flourished after 3000 BC and at their peak they covered the territory of today's Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania. One such settlement was also found in eastern Greece.