Until 1991 few people had heard of Vukovar, an eastern Croatian town of 80,000 people on the banks of the Danube. Although it is sited on what used to be one of Europe's main thoroughfares, the Danube was mainly used for cargo and pleasure boats, and few people tended to stop in this otherwise rural town when they had the delights of Vienna and Budapest a few days upriver.
But Vukovar's anonymity changed on 11 August when, as Yugoslavia broke up, Serb forces began shelling the town from across the river - partly because Vukovar had a substantial minority Serb population. In what was later acknowledged by the international court at the Hague as one of the first of the war crimes committed in the area, the hospital was a particular target.
Dr Vesna Bosanac, the hospital's director then and now, says that on the worst day, 700 shells hit the hospital - which continued treating Serb and Croat residents from Vukovar, alongside Croatian military casualties.
By the time the town fell to the invading Serb forces, the buildings had been reduced to rubble and most of the population had already fled. The few remaining people were found hiding in their basements, which was often all that was left standing.
All non-Serbs were forced to leave, many on foot. A further 300 men were taken to the neighbouring village of Ovcaria where, as was later discovered, most were executed.
Sixteen years later and Vukovar, though areas have been substantially rebuilt, is still littered with pock-marked and crumbling buildings. The Bata shoe factory, once the main employer, is empty.
In the middle of the town, historic buildings and 1970s shopping malls alike lie derelict, their surfaces covered with shrapnel marks, huge holes in floors and ceilings that took direct mortar hits. It is shocking to see a town in this state in the middle of Europe, and it gives an eerie sense of what many places must have looked like in the aftermath of 1945.
Yet despite the devastation, the ripping apart of the community along ethnic and cultural lines, and the lack of employment, people have returned. The first Croats were only allowed back to the town by the United Nations in 1997, which policed the area for several years.
Ten years later, as part of the ongoing attempt to rebuild this shattered community, the government has just announced a 226m kuna (£20m) museum development project, funded with a 75 per cent loan from the Council of Europe and the rest provided by Croatia.
'The truth is, the best hope in terms of economic development for Croatia is culture and tourism,' says Ruza Maric, the director of Vukovar's city museum. 'While that is already happening on the coast, I think it's relevant here too,' she adds. 'And more importantly, we have to give people a sense of hope about this town: that there are reasons to stay here or to come back. Many of the population are now scattered all over Croatia and may never return now.'
Maric, who led the Vukovar Museum in Exile in Zagreb, has been one of the leading figures in the regeneration of the town and in the efforts to encourage exiles to, as she puts it, 'believe in the future of Vukovar'.
The challenges that the museum, like the town, face are immense. Its main home, the baroque Eltz Palace in the centre of the city, was badly shelled. Most of the collection was removed by the Croatian government before the town fell - though some items have only recently been returned from Serbia.
But the building is largely wrecked. So far a few downstairs rooms have been restored and a small, modern art gallery constructed in the former orangery. It is used for exhibitions of local and international artists, while shows of everything from archaeology and natural history, to contemporary art, are installed into the remaining usable rooms.
Meanwhile concerts of all types of music are proving popular in the garden, which runs down to the river. About 135m kuna (£12.5m) will be spent renovating the palace.
Ruza Maric and architect Zeljko Kovacic intend to preserve some of the damaged rooms, as they are as a memorial to what Croats call the 'homeland war'. One of the most challenging aspects of the project is restoring the palace to create a multicultural centre, while preserving a record of what happened.
'My idea for the Eltz complex was to have, along with reconstruction, a parallel preservation and presentation of the war damage,' Kovacic says. 'The ravaged facade facing on to the Danube, the Serbian side from which the shells were coming, would be kept, as a facade of war, destruction and suffering - a memorial, so that it should never happen again. The other side, facing into the town, will be restored, to show that we can return to peace and reconstruction.'
Within the palace itself, some exhibition rooms will also be left in their stripped-out form.
On top of that, director Maric is also determined to revive her pre-war plans for an archaeology museum/park at the Neolithic excavations at Vucedol. Like other sites along the Danube, Vucedol has been a source of important finds, in particular unique ceramics from a culture dating from 3,000 to 2,200BC. Key objects, currently on display at the Eltz Palace, include the Vucedol Dove and what some archaeologists believe is the first Indo-European calendar, based on the cycle of the constellation Orion.
The proposed site for the park is four miles by road from Vukovar, though Maric hopes to encourage many visitors to take the hour-long boat trip which gives a greater sense of the environment.
About 44m kuna (£4.1m) has been earmarked for this project, which will incorporate an archaeology training centre, plus 40m kuna (£3.7m) for a new baroque centre in Vukovar, and a similar amount for the reconstruction of the 18th-century Odescalchi Palace in the neighbouring walled town of Ilok.
While these are the most substantial cultural projects in the area, they are by no means the first. With architect Zeljko Kovacic, Bosanac at the Vukovar hospital, has also created a memorial museum - inside the working corridors, and former atomic shelter of the hospital itself.
As a result the museum is open to visitors for only a few hours each day: the rest of the time it is in service as a corridor for patients and clinical staff alike. The museum uses the site to tell the story of the heroic efforts inside the hospital to care for patients under appalling conditions during the three months of siege.
Guided tours are provided, often by members of staff who worked at the hospital during the period, and Bosanac emphasises that 'Serb staff and Croat staff worked side by side', an assertion backed up by independent reports.
The problem for anyone working in the cultural field in Vukovar is that tensions between the Serb and non-Serb communities (local people talk of up to 15 ethnic groups in Vukovar before the war) remain high. About 10,000 Serbs still live in Vukovar, and memories of what happened between the two communities are raw.
'There have been efforts to promote reconciliation, but for many, it is still too early,' Maric says. Other people also suggest that the communities tolerate each other, but little more.
But once again it is the hospital that seems to be leading the way. Unlike the schools, which are now divided on sectarian lines, Vukovar central hospital remains the only healthcare centre in the area, treating Serb and Croat residents alike. Staffing is also about 30 per cent Serb, reflecting the current make-up of Vukovar itself.
The process has been painful, and staff admit that few Serbs want to visit the memorial museum, as yet. 'Many people just want to forget it happened and you can understand why,' one staff member told me.
Despite these problems, Vukovar's museums, like the town itself, are slowly rising from the ashes and may once again become places of dialogue and regeneration.
Jane Morris is a freelance arts writer and editor
But Vukovar's anonymity changed on 11 August when, as Yugoslavia broke up, Serb forces began shelling the town from across the river - partly because Vukovar had a substantial minority Serb population. In what was later acknowledged by the international court at the Hague as one of the first of the war crimes committed in the area, the hospital was a particular target.
Dr Vesna Bosanac, the hospital's director then and now, says that on the worst day, 700 shells hit the hospital - which continued treating Serb and Croat residents from Vukovar, alongside Croatian military casualties.
By the time the town fell to the invading Serb forces, the buildings had been reduced to rubble and most of the population had already fled. The few remaining people were found hiding in their basements, which was often all that was left standing.
All non-Serbs were forced to leave, many on foot. A further 300 men were taken to the neighbouring village of Ovcaria where, as was later discovered, most were executed.
Sixteen years later and Vukovar, though areas have been substantially rebuilt, is still littered with pock-marked and crumbling buildings. The Bata shoe factory, once the main employer, is empty.
In the middle of the town, historic buildings and 1970s shopping malls alike lie derelict, their surfaces covered with shrapnel marks, huge holes in floors and ceilings that took direct mortar hits. It is shocking to see a town in this state in the middle of Europe, and it gives an eerie sense of what many places must have looked like in the aftermath of 1945.
Yet despite the devastation, the ripping apart of the community along ethnic and cultural lines, and the lack of employment, people have returned. The first Croats were only allowed back to the town by the United Nations in 1997, which policed the area for several years.
Ten years later, as part of the ongoing attempt to rebuild this shattered community, the government has just announced a 226m kuna (£20m) museum development project, funded with a 75 per cent loan from the Council of Europe and the rest provided by Croatia.
'The truth is, the best hope in terms of economic development for Croatia is culture and tourism,' says Ruza Maric, the director of Vukovar's city museum. 'While that is already happening on the coast, I think it's relevant here too,' she adds. 'And more importantly, we have to give people a sense of hope about this town: that there are reasons to stay here or to come back. Many of the population are now scattered all over Croatia and may never return now.'
Maric, who led the Vukovar Museum in Exile in Zagreb, has been one of the leading figures in the regeneration of the town and in the efforts to encourage exiles to, as she puts it, 'believe in the future of Vukovar'.
The challenges that the museum, like the town, face are immense. Its main home, the baroque Eltz Palace in the centre of the city, was badly shelled. Most of the collection was removed by the Croatian government before the town fell - though some items have only recently been returned from Serbia.
But the building is largely wrecked. So far a few downstairs rooms have been restored and a small, modern art gallery constructed in the former orangery. It is used for exhibitions of local and international artists, while shows of everything from archaeology and natural history, to contemporary art, are installed into the remaining usable rooms.
Meanwhile concerts of all types of music are proving popular in the garden, which runs down to the river. About 135m kuna (£12.5m) will be spent renovating the palace.
Ruza Maric and architect Zeljko Kovacic intend to preserve some of the damaged rooms, as they are as a memorial to what Croats call the 'homeland war'. One of the most challenging aspects of the project is restoring the palace to create a multicultural centre, while preserving a record of what happened.
'My idea for the Eltz complex was to have, along with reconstruction, a parallel preservation and presentation of the war damage,' Kovacic says. 'The ravaged facade facing on to the Danube, the Serbian side from which the shells were coming, would be kept, as a facade of war, destruction and suffering - a memorial, so that it should never happen again. The other side, facing into the town, will be restored, to show that we can return to peace and reconstruction.'
Within the palace itself, some exhibition rooms will also be left in their stripped-out form.
On top of that, director Maric is also determined to revive her pre-war plans for an archaeology museum/park at the Neolithic excavations at Vucedol. Like other sites along the Danube, Vucedol has been a source of important finds, in particular unique ceramics from a culture dating from 3,000 to 2,200BC. Key objects, currently on display at the Eltz Palace, include the Vucedol Dove and what some archaeologists believe is the first Indo-European calendar, based on the cycle of the constellation Orion.
The proposed site for the park is four miles by road from Vukovar, though Maric hopes to encourage many visitors to take the hour-long boat trip which gives a greater sense of the environment.
About 44m kuna (£4.1m) has been earmarked for this project, which will incorporate an archaeology training centre, plus 40m kuna (£3.7m) for a new baroque centre in Vukovar, and a similar amount for the reconstruction of the 18th-century Odescalchi Palace in the neighbouring walled town of Ilok.
While these are the most substantial cultural projects in the area, they are by no means the first. With architect Zeljko Kovacic, Bosanac at the Vukovar hospital, has also created a memorial museum - inside the working corridors, and former atomic shelter of the hospital itself.
As a result the museum is open to visitors for only a few hours each day: the rest of the time it is in service as a corridor for patients and clinical staff alike. The museum uses the site to tell the story of the heroic efforts inside the hospital to care for patients under appalling conditions during the three months of siege.
Guided tours are provided, often by members of staff who worked at the hospital during the period, and Bosanac emphasises that 'Serb staff and Croat staff worked side by side', an assertion backed up by independent reports.
The problem for anyone working in the cultural field in Vukovar is that tensions between the Serb and non-Serb communities (local people talk of up to 15 ethnic groups in Vukovar before the war) remain high. About 10,000 Serbs still live in Vukovar, and memories of what happened between the two communities are raw.
'There have been efforts to promote reconciliation, but for many, it is still too early,' Maric says. Other people also suggest that the communities tolerate each other, but little more.
But once again it is the hospital that seems to be leading the way. Unlike the schools, which are now divided on sectarian lines, Vukovar central hospital remains the only healthcare centre in the area, treating Serb and Croat residents alike. Staffing is also about 30 per cent Serb, reflecting the current make-up of Vukovar itself.
The process has been painful, and staff admit that few Serbs want to visit the memorial museum, as yet. 'Many people just want to forget it happened and you can understand why,' one staff member told me.
Despite these problems, Vukovar's museums, like the town itself, are slowly rising from the ashes and may once again become places of dialogue and regeneration.
Jane Morris is a freelance arts writer and editor
