The Cres Museum Guided Tour

The guided tour at the Cres Museum offers a comprehensive exploration of the Arsan Palace, delving into its history, architectural significance, and its role as the museum’s home. This part of the tour highlights the Gothic-Renaissance fusion that characterizes the palace, reflecting on the broader architectural and urban planning styles of the Renaissance period in Cres. Additionally, the tour includes a walkthrough of the museum’s temporary exhibitions, providing insights into the rotating themes that capture various aspects of local culture, history, and art. This combination of permanent architectural history and changing exhibitions gives visitors a deep and varied understanding of the island’s heritage.

THE HERALDRY OF CRES
18 June – 15 October 2024

This exhibition presents the exceptionally rich heraldic heritage of the island through sixty coats of arms found on public buildings in Cres, on the facade and inside the Arsan Palace and in the Cres Museum collections.
The exhibition aims to bring the heraldic heritage closer to the residents of Cres and guests. It is present at almost every step in Cres, but most people today don’t understand it and don’t see how it gives us the means to understand the history of the city.
Coats of arms are permanent signs of history carved in stone. From the Renaissance period, along with the coats of arms of the Republic of Venice, its dukes and officials, there are also the coats of arms of the island’s patrician families Petris, Drasa, Moise and others, which marked the fate of Cres. Napoleon’s officials left us their seals, Austria its flag – every power that passed through here left its mark, just like the church orders that have existed here for seven centuries. Along with the legends and the map that visitors can find at this exhibition, they will be able to walk through Cres and discover a new meaning of the centuries-old symbols carved in stone.

THREE STORIES OF THE ARSAN PALACE
16 July – 15 October

Exhibition about Frane Petrić, the Arsan Palace and the Cres Museum.

Frane Petrić is a Renaissance philosopher whose name everyone knows, but about whose life people don’t know much. He was a world traveler, a respected scholar of his time and a polyhistor. He was born in Cres, but he left it as a child, not only because of education, but also because of the unfortunate situation in which his family found themselves. Petrić is a representative of Renaissance Neoplatonism and one of the greatest critics of Aristotle’s philosophy. His life was turbulent, he changed professions, traveled around Europe and socialized with the most distinguished personalities of the 16th century.

Arsan Palace is a Gothic-Renaissance palace, one of the most beautiful in Cres. Through its history we can show how life used to be. Although a legend says that this is the birthplace of Frane Petrić, there is no evidence for this. The house was built by Antun Marcello Petris, a general of the Franciscan order and a prominent figure of his time. We will briefly present the Arsan Palace and the culture of living in the 16th century in Cres. The bedroom of the former owner of the palace with its original fireplace and toilet testify to this fact.

We will also briefly present Cres Museum, situated in the Arsan Palace since 1973.