The Biankini Palace is located on the west side of Hektorović’s Tvrdalj, and it is there that the Museum of Stari Grad found its permanent address. This big palace, a Neo-Renaissance house with a courtyard and a garden, was built in 1896 by the Biankini brothers. The palace interior decorations were preserved, and the garden holds a 100-year-old Himalayan cedar tree, old as the palace itself.
The museum collections on the ground floor and two additional floors tell the story of Stari Grad’s long history.
Abdevnor’s room holds testament to a sunken Roman trading ship, which sailed from north Africa to the Pharia of late Antiquity in the 4th / 5th century. The stormy bora threw the ship onto the northern shores of Hvar Island, where it sank in the Duboka Bay. Covered in a thin layer of sand, most of the cargo and the ship’s wooden skeleton remain preserved.
Underneath the streets and houses of the Stari Grad’s historic town centre, numerous archaeological remains are hidden which testify to thousands of years of life in this area. The archaeological exhibition Faros – Faria – Stari Grad tells of life in the ancient Pharos – from 5th century BC to the 6th century.
The Gelineo – Bervaldi Saloon invokes the period of the citizens’ saloons of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the Captain’s Room represents the second half of the 19th century when Stari Grad was the living port of big sailing ships.
The second floor features works by four of the most famous Croatian artists of the 20th century: Juraj Plančić (1899 – 1930), Bartol Petrić (1899 – 1974), Pavo Dulčić (1947 – 1974) and Magda Dulčić (1965 – 2016).
