The Natural History Museum located within the park of the host Nikola is the first regional museum in the Rijeka region, which was founded in 1876 when Dr. Josef Roman Lorenz designed his concept according to the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Initially, the collection was an integral part of the city's museum, but since 1945 it has operated as an independent, richly held institution on its current site, where it was a zoo and aquarium until the 1960s. Today, the museum is geared toward marine research and contains a library specializing in biology, geology, and palaeontology. Visitors can enjoy the rich collections, the permanent exhibition representing the geological past of Adriatic and marine research, minerals, marine invertebrates, sharks, rays and the multimedia center "Aquarium", reptiles and amphibians from the Rijeka region.