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If you come to Gradiška, for at least one day, and not visit the Homeland Museum, as if you had never been to the city on the Sava. This year, the Gradiška Homeland Museum celebrates a valuable jubilee – 50 years of successful work. Motive more for you to come to the beautiful building of the former hotel ‘Kaiser’ (Kaiser), where this institution has been located since 2005. With two permanent exhibits, historical and archaeological and a very lively cultural and documentary program in the large gallery, the Homeland Museum is recognized as a center of cultural events.

The first museum exhibition was organized by the Gradiška Homeland Museum in 1970. It is a permanent museum exhibit ‘Ways of Victory’. It covered the period from the Bosnian Uprising of 1875-1878. until the fall of 1970. It is interesting that the exhibition was opened by the President of the Assembly of BiH, Džemal Bijedić. The exhibition was accompanied by a photo-monograph printed in 9000 copies. Simultaneously with this exhibition, work was done on collecting archeological material. The research in Donja Dolina in 1974 and 1975, under the leadership of archaeologist Zdenko Žeravica, was very fruitful.

A handful of finds from Donja Dolina, in which archeological research was started by Ćiro Truhelka at the beginning of the 20th century, including a monoxyl – a boat carved in a tree trunk found in 1904, ended up in the National Museum in Sarajevo. ‘Lower Valley in Prehistory’ is the name of a permanent archeological exhibition, authored by archaeologist Milan Đurđević, and was set up in 1980. A year later, Đurđević began excavations in the town of Vrbaški, popularly known as Marija’s town, which is located on the hill Pavetnjak above Gornji Podgradac.

The Gradiška Homeland Museum received the status of a public institution in 2003, and that is when the staff strengthening of this institution began. Curator and historian Bojan Vujčić has organized a series of historical exhibitions since 2012, and the book ‘Bosnian Gradiška and its surroundings in the First World War’, which was presented at the Belgrade Fair in 2019, and the album ‘Civil Gradiška’ stand out with pride. In 2019, the Museum published the book ‘Gradiški mostovi na Savi’, author Bojan Vujčić, and at the end of the same year, the director of the Homeland Museum Bojan Vujinović published the book ‘Manastirište u Gornji Kijevci’. The Cyrillic inscription from 1301 is one of the most valuable exhibits of the Homeland Museum of Gradiška, and this year the Post of the Republika Srpska will present it on a postage stamp on the occasion of the jubilee.

Although of local importance, the Homeland Museum often performed archeological excavations in Skelani, Bakinci, Derventa, Srbac, Žitomislić, Prijedor, Šušnjari near Slatina, Laktaši and other locations. The final works on the shooting of a documentary-feature film about Veljko Čubrilović are in progress. And along with the film, Čubrilović Square is being built, on the site where the house of Čubrilović, the most famous Gradiška family, used to be.

Written by Boško Grgić 

Translated by Alma Gadžo