Coming This Fall: In the Beginning Was the Kingdom – an exhibition marking 1100 years of the Croatian Kingdom

October 2025 – February 2026

History is the witness of time, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life (Cicero)

A love for my homeland and the desire to uncover the truth compelled me to write – with the intention of gathering what has been scattered, dispelling confusion, clarifying ambiguities, and revealing misconceptions… Should you find that I have wandered too far into speculation, or relied on the improbable, know that it was driven by a desire to draw something from obscurity and to satisfy your curiosity. If you are kind-hearted, you will not take offence. Take suppositions as such – if you manage to improve them, I shall be grateful.
(Ivan Lucius Lucić, On the Kingdom of Dalmatia and Croatia, translated from Latin by Bruna Kuntić Makvić)

Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Just as an identity card tells little about its holder, so too do the sparse facts found in history books and textbooks fail to tell the full story of a people. In order to understand ourselves and guard against forgetting, we have built a kind of archive of memory in which data are stored like the DNA of a living organism. We might imagine it as a family album of selected photographs, or as one of the hexagons in Borges’ infinite Library of Babel. Those who care for this archive are the Keepers of Memory – magistri memoriae.

Baptismal Font of Višeslav, 9th century, Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments, Split

One of the defining ideas within our archive, running through the entirety of Croatian history, concerns the establishment of a state community and its political affirmation in the area between the Adriatic Sea and the Pannonian Plain. This region, formerly part of the Roman Empire, would – despite its division in 395 and the fall of its Western part in 476 – remain a political and civilisational model for all successors, in both the West (Rome) and the East (Constantinople). The barbarian, semi-wild warriors gazing in awe at the deep blue sea and distant islands in the paintings of Celestin Medović or Oton Iveković, found in their new homeland an ancient world already crumbling (mundus senescit, say the chronicles of the time). Yet it was a world infused with a young, vital faith – a foundation upon which we learned to become part of the greater European family.

The kingdom – first in its real, historical manifestation and later as an idea containing the essence of political survival – remained a central concept of Croatian political reality and thought until the 20th century. The experience gained on that path is remarkably rich: we learned to organise society and state according to Roman law and the messages of the Gospels; to coexist with other peoples in various political configurations and unions; to engage in parliamentary negotiation, as well as armed resistance to tyranny. Throughout this time, the idea of the kingdom sustained us, helping us endure centuries of constant warfare, division, and the precarious life of a frontier people, with the Military Frontier persisting until as late as 1881.

Pluteus with the figure of a ruler on a throne, 11th century, Split, Baptistery of the Cathedral of St. Domnius

The concept of the kingdom (regnum) also possesses a mythical dimension – one that encompasses not only historical, but biblical, eschatological, and even romantic connotations. These have endowed the figure of the king (rex) with a certain mystique, establishing him as an archetypal symbol in European history. Every king is both the heir to God’s anointed, King David, and to King Arthur. He is surrounded by his companions – the knights of the Round Table and courtly ladies; his capital is Camelot – a nest of civility, art, and wisdom. Yet more than the king himself – who played a limited role in actual Croatian history between the 10th and 12th centuries – the focus of this exhibition is the persistent, resilient idea that survived the last of the Trpimirović dynasty and inspired Ivan Lučić (1604–1679), the father of Croatian historiography, to write De regno Dalmatiae et Croatiae over five centuries after the kingdom’s disappearance, giving new impetus to the fight for political survival in early modern Europe. Through the many whirlpools of the 19th and 20th centuries, that struggle ultimately brought us to 1991 and the independent Republic of Croatia. Today we live in a republic – but in the beginning, there was the kingdom.

This exhibition, marking the 1100th anniversary of the kingdom and serving as the crowning event of the jubilee year, is divided into thematic units shaped around the dominant historical, social, and cultural phenomena of each period. From one gallery to the next, the emphasis is on the legal and symbolic continuity of the kingdom, enabling us to trace the idea of statehood through the centuries – from the early medieval Croatian state and native rulers, to the election of foreign dynasties in subsequent periods. This idea manifests in various categories, not necessarily equally or simultaneously present: the people (GENS / POPULUS), faith (RELIGIO), language (LINGUA), customs (MOS MAIORUM / TRADITIO), and nation (NATIO). The historical sequence we aim to follow reveals a distinctive “mentality” of Croatian statehood. It is characterised by a lasting affiliation with “imperial superstructures” (the Roman Church, the Frankish Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy), and this political and civilisational legacy has prepared us for participation in today’s European community of nations.

Crown from the Angevin period, mid-14th century, Zadar, Permanent Exhibition of Church Art (from the Church of St. Simeon)

The “mythical” status of the year 925, which the exhibition centres upon, was confirmed by our forebears a hundred years ago, when the thousandth anniversary of the kingdom was commemorated across the Croatian lands. Not wishing to lag behind them – and convinced that, in an independent state born from the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for it, we have both additional reason and duty to once again recall the long tradition that draws its strength from our allotted piece of the Earth’s crust – we invite you to join us in becoming Keepers of Memory. It is our hope that every visitor to this exhibition will relive this demanding, often painful, yet determined journey through more than a thousand years of history.
In the beginning, there was the kingdom.

Dino Milinović

The co-organizers of the exhibition: