How powerful human memory is! A label, the shape of a bottle, the colour of the packaging – that is all it takes. And suddenly, before your eyes, appears a kitchen that no longer exists. A table you no longer sit at. People who have long since gone. That is the moment when this space stops being a museum of objects and becomes what the Krivokapić family themselves call it – a Museum of Memories.
There are museums you enter in order to see the past. And then there are those rare places where, the moment you open the door, the past steps out to meet you. It waits for you in an armchair. Rings from an old telephone. Looks back at you from the shelves of a wall unit. Waits in the refrigerator, among bottles of “Jupi”, builder’s beer and mineral water that some still call sparkling water.
It lingers in the smell of old books and vinyl records and, before I even realise it, I am no longer in Podgorica in 2026.
I am back in Titograd. In the city where I grew up and which, no matter how different its name and appearance may be today, I still carry deep within me.
That is why my entrance into the “Titograd in the 1980s” museum, opened in an old salon-style apartment on Ulica Slobode, was not an ordinary visit to a museum exhibition. It felt more like coming home after several decades. Except this was not my apartment. And yet, in some strange way – it was.
Because almost every object I saw belonged not only to the family that once used it, but to an entire generation of people from Titograd. To our living rooms, kitchens, children’s rooms, school days, first records, nights out, football matches and all those little things that, only much later, we realise are what life is actually made of.
The museum that Draško and Dijana Krivokapić spent almost a year creating was conceived precisely in that spirit – not as a space where exhibits would be locked behind glass, but as an apartment you can enter, sit down in, open a drawer, pick up a book, put on a record and touch the past.
And perhaps that is precisely where its greatest value lies.
On wardrobes, tables, display cabinets and the refrigerator, there are small stickers bearing one simple word: “Take a look inside.” They could not have chosen a better invitation. Because Titograd of the 1980s is not a city you simply glance at. You have to look inside. The way neighbours used to inspect your shopping bags when you came back from the store. Or when they walked into your kitchen and lifted the lid off a pot to see what was cooking for lunch. Open the “Meblo” wall unit, move grandmother’s lace doily aside, leaf through a magazine that had been passed from house to house for months, hold the famous Yugoslav red passport or a student record book. Look at an old “Iskra” rotary telephone and remember a time when we knew the phone numbers of the people we loved by heart.
Already in the hallway I am greeted by the legendary “Titovka” armchairs. Next to them stand a small table, a lamp and a photograph of Josip Broz Tito – a scene that will probably look like a set from an old film to younger visitors, but one that is very familiar to us Titograd residents.
Life was simple like that. The living room is dominated by a huge “Kapri” wall unit, more than half a century old. Six metres of furniture! Today’s generations, accustomed to minimalism, can hardly understand just how important a wall unit was in a Yugoslav household. A wall unit was not a piece of furniture. It was an institution. It contained the family history. Books “by the metre”, photographs, crystal glasses waiting for some “special guests”, documents, savings books, photo albums, vinyl records, decorative vases, perhaps a bottle of liquor no one was allowed to open without a special reason... In this museum wall unit, “Insa” clocks, an “Ei Niš” radio, books about Titograd, works by Yugoslav and Montenegrin writers, briefcases, student record books, employment records and a Yugoslav passport are once again gathered together. There is also the “Crni biser” television set, one of those objects that probably looks like a technological fossil to younger people today, but which once represented our window to the world. There was no Netflix. There was no rewinding. There was no “I’ll watch it later”. If you missed something, you were condemned to hearing a retelling from your parents or friends. Perhaps that is why we waited for things more eagerly and enjoyed them more.
And then I reach the kitchen. And here nostalgia has no intention of remaining subtle. An original “Marles” kitchen, orange – boldly orange in the way only the 1970s and 1980s knew how to be. An “Obod” refrigerator, a “Gorenje” mixer, scales, an “Iskra” vacuum cleaner, a “Sloboda” stove, “Jugokeramika” cups... “Kravica”, “Čiča Gliša”, “Frank” coffee, “Centroproizvod”… An entire industrial geography of Yugoslavia fits into one kitchen.
Factories had names we knew almost as well as the names of football players.
And “Obod” had a special meaning for us. A refrigerator from Cetinje was not just a household appliance. It was part of the story of a country that produced what it used and of a city where everyone knew someone who worked at Obod, “Radoje Dakić”, “Titeks”, the Aluminium Plant...
I open the museum refrigerator. Inside are “Jupi”, “Pećko” beer, Rubin oil, Podravka syrups, “Vital” lard... And I realise just how powerful human memory is. A label is enough. The shape of a bottle. The colour of the packaging. And suddenly, before your eyes, appears a kitchen that no longer exists. A table you no longer sit at. People who have long since gone. That is the moment when this space stops being a museum of objects and becomes what the Krivokapić family themselves call it – a Museum of Memories.
On the dining table, a crocheted doily. Because what kind of Yugoslav apartment would it have been without doilies? A doily on the table. A doily on the sideboard. A doily under the vase. And the absolute pinnacle of home aesthetics – a doily on top of the television. Today it seems charming to us, perhaps even a little funny. Back then it was completely normal. Just like the “Great National Cookbook”, decorative tableware that was almost never used and was saved for guests, cupboards full of glasses arranged according to a hierarchy of importance. There were glasses for everyday use. And the others – for guests. And there were, as people in our part of the world used to say, also important guests – the ones for whom you had to bring out the very best the house had to offer. Much has changed. But some things, for better or worse, have not changed in Montenegro.
If the living room took me back to Titograd, the children’s room took me straight back to growing up. Here, I am no longer the chronicler of the city. Here, I am a boy who collected diplomas and proudly wore a pioneer cap and red scarf. Who kept comic books and tapes – audio and video. Some had “Elan” skis, guitars, roller skates, a stereo system and a “Commodore 64”… We shared everything! On the shelves: Danijel Popović, Makadam, Zdravko Čolić... On the other side, “Tempo” from 1989, with our Dejan Savićević on the cover. A genius! And there, there is no helping me. I am back in the time when we played football in the courtyard until the ball got lost or until our mother called us home from the window. When there was no WhatsApp group to arrange where we would meet. Everyone knew where the gang was. Behind the building. At the court. In the street. On the playground. And someone was always already there. Perhaps that is the greatest difference between the children of Titograd in the 1980s and the children of Podgorica today. We did not have to “organise hanging out”. Hanging out was the natural state of things.
Nostalgia is a dangerous thing. It can easily turn the past into a postcard with nothing unpleasant in it. That is why I do not believe the value of this museum lies in the message that everything used to be better. It was not. But it was different. And it is worth remembering how. Because a city is not only a map of streets, buildings and boulevards. A city is also the way its residents lived. What they kept on their shelves. What they ate. What they listened to. What they watched on Sunday evenings. Which club they supported. That is precisely why the idea that Draško and Dijana Krivokapić transformed into this unusual apartment is so important.
For almost a year, Draško and Dijana searched for exhibits across Montenegro and the region – from Cetinje, Bar and Herceg Novi to Sarajevo, Vojvodina, Mostar and Pančevo – trying to assemble an authentic picture of an average Yugoslav home. And they succeeded in something more difficult than collecting antiques. They brought back the atmosphere of a bygone era. That is why, for me, “Titograd in the 1980s” is not a place where old things are preserved. It is a place where something far more fragile is preserved. Memory. And as I walked out of this apartment, I had the feeling that I had not just finished visiting a museum. Rather, after many years, I had simply stopped by the neighbours’ place for coffee. In Titograd.
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