The Managing Board of the Natural History Museum announced today that it supports the initiative for the museum to finally obtain its own building in the area of Friendship Park at Ušće in Belgrade, as well as the construction of an aquarium which, as they state, will enable visitors to observe nature through different complementary approaches.
“The construction of a new building for the Natural History Museum in Friendship Park at Ušće, opposite Great War Island, will mark the opening of a new chapter in the permanent protection and presentation of Serbia’s natural heritage. The Museum’s employees are experts and scientists who have dedicated their professional work to the study and preservation of nature. Scientists are not a threat to nature, but its most devoted guardians – those who, through their actions, protect what others merely observe,” the statement said, as reported by Beta.
The new building will make it possible for a significant portion of the museum’s natural history exhibits – from Pančić’s collections and the oldest fossils, through meteorites and minerals from Trepča, to dinosaur skeletons and Ice Age animals – which are currently kept in storage, to become accessible to the public, while ensuring adequate conditions for the full implementation of the Museum’s scientific, educational and exhibition activities.
As regards the Aquarium in the immediate vicinity of the Natural History Museum, the planned spatial and thematic relationship between these two investments will enable visitors to observe nature through different complementary approaches – through museum collections and the interpretation of natural heritage within the Museum, as well as through the presentation of living aquatic systems in accordance with specific professional standards.
Similar models of complementary presentation of nature have been developed in numerous international natural science centres, where natural history museums and aquariums or oceanariums operate in close proximity or as part of a broader scientific and educational offering of the city, such as Lisbon (Museu Nacional de História Natural and Oceanário de Lisboa), Osaka (National Museum of Nature and Science and Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan) and Barcelona (Museu de Ciències Naturals and L’Aquàrium), the Museum stated.
They believe that this approach will enable visitors to view nature through different but interconnected scientific perspectives. The Natural History Museum and the Aquarium will have a joint ticket, providing an integrated experience of discovering nature through its various forms of presentation.
This project will represent an investment in the future of education and science and a unique opportunity for Belgrade to gain a modern centre for natural sciences, accessible to students of biology, geology, veterinary medicine and other related disciplines – a centre they have not had until now and which the academic and scientific community greatly needs.
“The Natural History Museum, an institution with a tradition longer than 130 years, is the only national museum of its kind that is still in temporary premises, without a permanent exhibition that would present in one place the valuable collections of the most prominent Serbian and world scientists and researchers such as Jovan Cvijić, Josif Pančić, Mihailo Petrović Alas, Jovan Žujović, Archibald Reiss and others,” the statement by the Management Board of the Natural History Museum said.
(Nova Ekonomija, 02.03.2026)