Herceg Novi City Museum "Mirko Komnenović"

A complex museum in the late-18th-century house of mayor Mirko Komnenović in Topla: archaeology from Vranjaj cave to underwater finds, Boka icons, town and village ethnology and a seafarers' botanical garden.

History Museum · Herceg Novi

Hours: Mon-Sat 08:00-17:00

Herceg Novi City Museum "Mirko Komnenović" (Gradski muzej Mirko Komnenović) is the town museum of Herceg Novi, at Mirka Komnenovića 9 in Topla. It occupies a late-Baroque house from the end of the 18th century that the mayor Mirko Komnenović (1870-1941) left to the town, and it has been open to the public since 28 October 1953. The collection runs from prehistoric finds and underwater archaeology to Boka icons and the ethnology of town and village, with a botanical garden around the house. It opens Monday to Saturday 08:00-17:00.

Opening hours and tickets

Monday to Saturday 08:00-17:00. No Sunday hours are given, so check before a Sunday visit. Ask the ticket price at the entrance.

What to see

This is a complex museum with four strands: archaeology, history, art and ethnology.

Herceg Novi City Museum: the house with its Baroque gable

Archaeology. Prehistoric finds from Vranjaj cave below Radoštak and from Illyrian tumuli; antiquity, including underwater archaeology, with a wreck at Cape Kabala that yielded a ship's cannon from the late 15th or early 16th century; an early medieval lapidarium with an 11th-century parapet slab and altar-screen parts from St Thomas church in Kuti.
Icons. Works of the Boka school (the Rafailović-Dimitrijević painters) alongside Russian and Greek icons. An icon of the Apostle Thomas from 1833 has been proposed for the status of a cultural asset of national importance.
Ethnology of town and village, and a collection of contemporary art.
The house itself. The original ground-floor door carries the names of Russian soldiers, carved with bayonets in 1807. At the entrance stands a relief of the Bay of Kotor at 1:150,000, a good way to place the towns of the bay before walking them.
The botanical garden around the house, planted with species that local seafarers brought home from their voyages; an avocado tree is among them.

History

The house was built at the end of the 18th century in late-Baroque style and altered in the 19th century. Komnenović, mayor of Herceg Novi, left it to the town to become its museum; the museum was founded in 1949 and opened in 1953. Partial repairs followed in 1979, 1994, 1996 and 2001. The operator is the municipal institution "Gradski muzej Mirko Komnenović i galerija Josip Bepo Benković", which also runs the Josip Bepo Benković gallery at Marka Vojnovića 4 and the "Dom starog kapetana" (Old Captain's House) in Baošići on the bay.

Getting there

The museum is in Topla, at Mirka Komnenovića 9. Marka Vojnovića 4 is the address of the Benković gallery and the institution's seat, not of the museum.