Šibenik City Museum

Alongside the Cathedral of St James, facing the Adriatic, the medieval Rector’s Palace was converted into the Šibenik City Museum in 1975, occupying the atrium and south wing. As was the way with museums at that time, this institution is quite old-school – you shouldn’t come here expecting hands-on features and displays that move or light up. However, given the unique nature of Šibenik in relation to its neighbours, settlements built by Greeks, Romans or both, evidence of the local Illyrian and Croatian heritage here offer a different insight than you’ll find in Split or Zadar. For a start, it goes way back, to the Danilian era some 6,000 years ago, around 4,000-4,500BC, named after the village of Danilo close to Šibenik where important discoveries were found in the 1950s. Artefacts here, particuarly ceramics, shed light on just how developed so-called Danilian Culture was, thousands of years before the Romans. Look out, too, for the sparkling medieval jewellery and overview of Šibenik’s development in the 1200s and 1300s.