Kumrovec - Staro Selo Museum

The Staro Selo Museum is located in Kumrovec, a small settlement in the northwestern part of Croatia, which belongs to the Krapina-Zagorje County. The settlement lies on the Sutla River, which forms a natural border between Croatia and Slovenia, and is surrounded by the characteristic hilly landscape of Hrvatsko Zagorje. The town is best known as the birthplace of Josip Broz Tito, which makes it an important historical and tourist destination.

The Staro Selo Museum is the largest open-air ethnographic museum in Croatia and at the same time the only museum of its kind in the country. Its main purpose is the preservation, research, and presentation of the traditional way of life of the inhabitants of Hrvatsko Zagorje at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. It offers visitors insight into the everyday life of the rural population, their working habits, family customs, celebrations, and economic activities that shaped life in the countryside during that period. The most important attraction of the museum is the birthplace house of Josip Broz Tito – President of Yugoslavia, located at the entrance of the museum complex. It is a traditional Zagorje house from the second half of the 19th century, in which Tito was born in 1892. In front of the house stands the famous bronze statue of Josip Broz Tito, created by the Croatian sculptor Antun Augustincic, installed in 1948, and it represents one of the most recognizable landmarks of Kumrovec. Over the decades, the statue has become a symbol of the town and an important point of interest for many visitors and historians. The museum complex consists of a restored core of a traditional Zagorje village with 25 residential houses, nine farm buildings, and eight smaller structures, including two corn barns, two pigsties, and four wells. All buildings have been restored and reconstructed in a way that faithfully preserves their original appearance and architectural features of the period represented by the museum. Walking through the village, visitors can get a sense of how life was organized in a traditional rural environment of Hrvatsko Zagorje more than a century ago. The museum collection includes numerous exhibits, most of which are presented in the permanent exhibition. Fifteen ethnographic and two historical collections present housing culture, food, clothing heritage, agricultural tools, household items, and numerous crafts and traditional skills such as blacksmithing, pottery, beekeeping, weaving, and woodwork. Special emphasis is placed on crafts and knowledge that have almost completely disappeared or survive only as part of cultural heritage. In addition to everyday life, the museum also presents important historical figures and events connected with Kumrovec at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This allows visitors to better understand the social, economic, and political conditions of the time, when the area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Special attention is given to preserving the original appearance of the cultural landscape, the traditional layout of buildings, and the characteristic Zagorje village scenery. The most extensive restoration works in Staro Selo took place between 1979 and 1985, when a large conservation and infrastructure project was carried out. During this period, the old village road and stone bridge were restored, and the Skrnik stream, which flows through the village towards the nearby Sutla River, was regulated. The aim of the renovation was to preserve the authenticity of the site while adapting it for museum purposes, without losing its historical and ethnological value.

Today, the Staro Selo Museum represents one of the most important cultural and historical landmarks of Hrvatsko Zagorje and a significant tourist destination, attracting numerous visitors from Croatia and abroad each year. With its authentic architecture, rich collections, presentations of traditional crafts, and preserved cultural landscape, it makes an important contribution to the preservation and presentation of the ethnological heritage of this part of Croatia, offering visitors a direct experience of rural life in Zagorje more than a century ago.