The Covid-19 pandemic and the 22 March earthquake that hit Zagreb and its environs led to a marked dwindling in the number of visitors to Croatian museums in 2020, shows a survey conducted by the Museum Documentation Centre (MDC).

In 2019, as many as 5.2 million visited Croatia’s museums and in 2020, these numbers declined 72% to a mere 1.46 million, a record low since 2001, according to the survey conducted in 162 museums across the country.

Although the lockdown for Croatian museums lasted only a month and half, until 27 April, while the coronavirus pandemic kept many European museums in lockdown for six months, the statistical data about visitors are equally devastating for such institutions in Croatia as in the rest of Europe, the MDC underscores.

Furthermore, the 5.5 strong earthquake caused damage to museum buildings in Zagreb, and a third of them were forced to close their doors due to that disaster in March. They lost a million visitors, which was a drop of 78.5% on the year to a mere 293,000 visitors.

For the sake of comparison, all the museums and galleries in the capital city had fewer visitors in 2020 than only one institution — the Klovicevi Dvori Gallery — had in 2019.

A million fewer foreign visitors

In previous years, a quarter of all visitors to museums and galleries in Croatia were foreigners. In 2020, their numbers decreased by a million.

This mostly affected museums in tourists resort and in coastal cities.

For instance, the number of visitors to the Archaeological Museum of Istria, which was the most visited museum in Croatia in the previous six years, plummeted by 71% to a mere 163,660 in 2020.