The Virovitica Municipal Museum was established in September of 1953 as a complex native museum for the City of Virovitica and the Virovitica county. The foundations of what was later to become the Municipal Museum were laid by one, occasionally two officials at the Pejacevic manor-house attic. With maximum support of the locals, through donations, buyoffs and collecting, holdings were acquired for archeoligical, ethnographic, cultural/historical, and visual arts collection, while library, archives, and photographic library were established somewhat later.

The museum holdings collected were exhibited as "The First Museum Exhibition" in May, 1954. Exhibitions were at the time organized on various locations in the city because the Museum was still lacking its own space.

The first collection on permanent display entitled "Through the History of Virovitica" was opened in 1968 at the grand hall on the first floor of the manor-house, still used for many temporary exhibitions. Since then, the entire manor-house has gradually been adapted for the purpose. On 2 October, 1984, on the occasion of the city's 750th anniversary and in the scope of a scientific gathering that was organized there at the time, the following collections have been put on permanent display: Archeological, Cultural & Historic, Ethnographic, and Branislav Glumac's donation.

The entire holdings were moved in 1991 due to the immediate war threat, but they were returned in the summer of 1992 and have remained open to visitors ever since.

Today, the Museum has around 5,000 items, 880 out of which are on permanent display, presenting life style of the Virovitica region from the end of late Stone Age until the first decades of the 20th c.

The Manor-House location
The park located in the centre of the town - a former medieval fortress site - hosts the Pejacevic family manor-house built from 1800-1804 after designs by the Viennese architect Roth. The manor-house constitutes a category I monument. It is a striking single-storey building of late Baroque and Classicist style features. Apart from a number of photographs and a few sketches from the middle and the end of the past century, the earliest appearance of the manor-house ever recorded is found on Friedrich Lieder's photograph from 1811 showing the "Pejacevic Family at the Park" (today found at the Osijek Gallery of Visual Arts). The manor-house was named after its first owners, the counts of Pejacevic. From mid 19th c. until 1911, it was owned by the Schaumburg-Lippe princely family, after which it was purchased by count Draskovic. The Municipality of Virovitica has bought it for its own needs in 1930 together with the park surrounding it. The estate still dominates the town centre.

The park surrounding the manor-house
The park surrounding the manor-house is a protected natural monument. Its shaping began towards the beginning of the 19th c., after the manor-house was built under Antun II Pejacevic. The location coincides with the former site of a medieval fortress.

This is still shown by the moat that survived the centuries. The 1882 cadastral map shows that the park was already completed by then. As regards broadleaf trees, the park is dominated by autochthonous species and their cultivated varieties, as for instance: The pyramidal oak (Quercus robur f. fastigiata), the field ash-tree (Fraxinus excelsior), the quite domesticated horsechestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). From foreign tree species, we can mention the Gymnocladus dioica, the Sophora japonica, and the plane-tree (Pllatanus acerifolis P. occidenthalis).

The area along the moat is dominated by the marshland cypress tree (Taxodium distichum). As regards conifers, we may found red ceder (Juniperus virginiana), and gingko tree (Ginko biloba) - a mythical Asian Ice Age tree. The park used to have exhuberant flowery bushes that in time went to decay and were replaced by new species.