The Felbar Collection (Collectio Felbar) brings together around 500 old maps and just over 400 old books, mostly history books and travelogues. The focus of the collection is on titles that represent or focus on Croatia and its regions (Istria, Slavonia, Dalmatia) and its neighboring countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro).
Starting in 1999, the collection was developed by Ewald Felbar, who spent many years in the region of the former Yugoslavia for professional reasons. The aim is making the unique historical sources accessible to an interested audience.
For this reason, there is at least one picture on this page for each title as well as interesting information and descriptions written by recognized Croatian experts (see section experts). Another advantage is that the information, at least for maps, is also available in German and English in addition to Croatian.
The search can be carried out by title, keywords, the author, the period of publication or the inventory number and the most important information can be displayed and printed out in PDF format.
The collection is continuously expanded and the titles acquired the year before are uploaded once a year.
As of the end of 2019, there were 481 maps, views and pictures of traditional costumes in the collection. Those maps and views relating to the areas of Croatia, Istria, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro can be found on this website. At the end of 2019, there were a total of 419 individual titles (some of them consist of two or more connected maps) from 124 authors such as Ortelius, De Jode, Münster, Merian, Mercator, Blaeu, Hondius, Cantelli, Camocio, Rosaccio, Coronelli, Waldseemüller or Bordone. The focus is on maps that are at least 200 years old. Around 200 maps from the collection are framed, the rest is put in an acid-neutral passe-partout. The representation on this web-page follows the author's last name in alphabetical order.
In addition to old maps, the Felbar Collection also contains history books and travel books from the areas of Croatia, Dalmatia, Slavonia, Istria, as well as Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro, and by the end of 2019 there were a total of 405 titles. Most of them, 215, are in German, 70 in English, 35 in French, 34 in Italian, 30 in Croatian, 6 in Latin, and 7 in other languages. This collection includes also the rare works by Serafino Razzi, Giacomo Luccari, Ioannes Lucius, Alberto Fortis, Joseph Lavallee or Francesco Carrara (see also the selection at Top-25). The representation follows the author's last name in alphabetical order.