PEEK&POKE Computer Museum — Attraction in Grad Rijeka

This museum made our day in Rijeka. It is just the best place! It was rainy and we had to kill a few hours before our bus transfer. We had checked the options in Rijeka the same morning and found this cool computer museum but the website said that it had closed the season three days before. But it also gave me the opportunity to write an email and so I did but I got no reply. When we were walking around the city, a very nice young guitar player showed us the way to the museum and we found a note with a phone number on the front door which said that visitors could always call this number. I encouraged my partner to do so and the call was answered by a very friendly man who then came and opened the museum for us a few minutes later. He then offered us some fruit and turned everything on for us. We then walked around and had some very nice and funny conversations with Davor. We felt very much at home and reminded of old times. The museum has a lot of curiosities and many interesting things to see. Even if you are not a nerd, it is so cool to learn about computer history. Davor also told a lot of exciting stories about the items on display. We played the Theremin and took some funny pictures in a moon suit. We also bought two very cool shirts with a Nikola Tesla motive and wear them proudly. When we left the museum after three hours, we were very happy that Davor had answered the phone and made this unique and individual experience possible. Forget all the typical tourist things to do in Rijeka, this is where you should go. A very special homely place with so...

Visitors to the PEEK&POKE computer club in Rijeka, Croatia are encouraged to let their inner geek run wild and play Pacman on an 8-bit machine, use the computer Andy Warhol used for his early digital art, or simply kick back and play Mario Kart.

The permanent exhibition, which covers over 3,000 square feet, is the largest collection of its kind in Europe. PEEK&POKE, which was initiated by the Calculus Association and opened in 2007, features calculators, punch-hole computers, early games consoles, obsolete desktops, as well as stranger relics like the infamous Virtual Boy, a 1995 marketing failure by Nintendo, which used a series of 224 red LE diodes and vibrating mirrors to create depth illusion. But it left users feeling dizzy and nauseated and prominent scientists claimed it could cause sickness, flashbacks, and even permanent brain damage.

Many of the exhibits are kept fully functional to facilitate the club’s goal of remaining a gathering place for computer enthusiasts for learning and entertainment.

Visitors to PEEK&POKE are free to roam and play at the educational and not-for-profit project, which prefers the label computer club to museum. While having the rare and vintage items expected of a traditional museum, the personality, intimacy, and interactivity of the place is more akin to a very enthusiastic collector showing friends around their basement. Which in a...

I expected this to be a somebody's basement type of experience (esp having been to the 80s "museum" in Zagreb). But as a frequenter of computer history museums, this wildly exceeded expectations. It has a feel of visiting someone's personal collection, but in the best way. The place is packed to the brim with an impressive collection of artefacts, some of which interactive, and others examinable close up, most of which with explanatory, historical, contextual information. Some amazing and rare finds including many I've never seen before, especially from technology history in this part of Europe.

Did I walk around the place for over an hour pointing out to my gf all of the devices I've previously owned or used? Of course. Did I have frequent pangs of nostalgia hearing the sound of Commodore keyboards I wrote basic programs on as a kid? Definitely. Did I get unreasonably excited about the heyday of computer graphics standing next to a giant Silicon Graphics mainframe that probably rendered a couple frames of Jurassic park? Yep.

Definitely a must do for technology or video game nerds, not to mention lovers of unique museums. The owners were wonderful to talk to, and for a museum of the size had an incredibly impressive t-shirt, mug, and magnet collection in the...