Museum of the Homeland War

The Barutana Memorial Area, which is also called Bjelovar’s Hiroshima, is one of the particularly emotional places you can visit in Bjelovar. Located in the Bedenik forest, in the northwestern part of the city, the area was renovated and opened in 2020, and serves as a painful reminder of those who died and suffered in the defence of the city during the Homeland War.

Barutana 1991 nowadays contains a monument to fallen veterans, a chapel and an information and educational center, and there is also an educational trail with 14 information panels that follow the development of events right from the breakup of Yugoslavia through the Homeland War and key events in it, to the last military and law enforcement operations. The T55 tank and the BVP M80, the original infantry fighting vehicle, can also be viewed in the area.

The Museum of the Operational Zone and the Bjelovar Assembly Area is part of the aforementioned informational and educational center within Barutana. In addition to the already mentioned educational trail and outdoor exhibition, the Museum hides a number of indoor contents. These are primarily interactive stagings of important local and national events that marked the Homeland War, but also a memorial room in which all fallen veterans of Barutana and the Bjelovar area in general are honored, and a corridor with a 25-meter long timeline with the history of the Homeland War and an overview of other events during the war.

In the attic, there is a gallery where art by painters from the wider Bjelovar area is exhibited, and which mainly focus on the Homeland War.