HT
Museum in Zagreb is a specialized museum institution whose basic task is to collect, process, preserve, exhibit, and publish museum materials and documentation related to the history of telecommunications and post in Croatia, as well as studying the development and importance of organized communication throughout history. The extensive collection of the HT Museum numbers over 70,000 items of museum, archival, and book material from telecommunication and postal history.
It was founded back in 1953 under the name PTT Museum after the founder whose main activity was the post, telegraph, and telephone. With the changes in the name and status of the founders, the name of the Museum also changed (PTT / HPT / HT Museum). When it was founded, the Museum was housed in the Postal and Telegraph Palace in the center of Zagreb, built in 1904. The Museum was opened to the public in 1997.
The collection of the HT Museum is organized into museum collections within
3 departments. The telecommunications department contains material showing the development of telecommunications in Croatia since the construction of the first telegraph line in 1850, the first telephone connection in 1881, the first public telephone network in 1887, the first mobile network in 1991, and the development of telecommunications services in Croatia to the present. The collections within this department contain an exceptional selection of all known types of telephones, mobile phones, telegraphs, parts and units of telephone exchanges, measuring instruments, computers, etc. The postal department of the Museum keeps material that shows the centuries-old organization and development of postal activity in Croatia: mail chests and mailboxes, postal uniforms, postcards, greeting cards, etc. The collections within the Philatelic Department have Croatian and foreign postage stamps and other postal-philatelic values, letters, stamps, etc. The largest collection of museum material is the Collection of Foreign Postage Stamps. The Museum also keeps extensive archives and has a library with a fund of almost 20,000 copies, with a large selection of postal and telecommunications professional literature, telephone directories, and reference books.
The activity of the HT Museum includes expert and scientific processing of museum objects and their systematization into collections, preventive and permanent protection of museum material and documentation, and publication of data and knowledge about museum material through expert, scientific, and other information means. The result of this research are many museum exhibitions organized inside and outside the Museum, as well as occasional printed publications that are permanently available to the public.
HT Museum is a museum institution of state scope that performs its activities according to the Museum Act and other positive regulations of the Republic of Croatia related to cultural goods. It works within the system of Croatian museums, and its collections are listed on the List of Protected Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Croatia.