The Salona Branch Collection and Site safeguards all movable and fixed monuments that are located in situ at Salona, inside and outside the ancient city’s walls, encompassing an area of just over 9 hectares. The Collection holds movable archaeological objects found during large-scale systematic, revisionary and rescue excavations, which since 1970 have been conducted by the Archaeological Museum in Split either independently or in collaboration with other Croatian and foreign experts (Ilinac, Porta Caesarea, Hortus Metrodori, south-eastern necropolis, bypass 1986/87, Theatre and Temple, Amphitheatre, Marusinac, Manastirine, etc.), as well as objects discovered during rescue excavations in the wider environs of the town of Solin (i.e., the ancient city and its ager) conducted by experts from the Conservation Office in Split and certain private archaeological service companies (Amphitheatre, Bencunuše, natural gas pipeline section on Stjepan Radić street, etc.). The movable materials are held in the depots of the Tusculum, the Museum’s building in Manastirine, Solin, and the main museum building in Split. In 1988, the Archaeological Museum formed the Salona Operating Unit in the interest of better protecting and presenting Salona, which has been under the Museum’s care since its inception. New jobs were thus created for two on-site curators, as well as an architect, support staff and security guards. In 1996, the Museum formed the Salona Archaeological Collection and Site to ensure improved technical processing and scholarly analysis of finds. It received its present name, the Salona Brach Collection and Site, in 2005. A high number of items that had previously been encompassed by other collections, such as the Epigraphic, Roman-Provincial and Late Antique Collections, became a part of this new collection. Thus far, the collection consists of approximately 12,000 items.

A smaller portion of the movable finds is on exhibit in the Tusculum, the Museum’s local building adjacent to the ruins of an early Christian basilica in Manastirine. They can be viewed in the Don Frano Bulić Memorial Room and at the entrance next to the reception area. This building was constructed in 1898 at the initiative of Don Frano Bulić, the Archaeological Museum’s renowned director at the time, to support archaeological field work and welcome the many visitors who wished to tour the ancient city. Bulić named it Tusculum, after the Roman aristocracy’s favourite excursion destination, where a luxurious villa was owned by the great Roman writer and orator Cicero. Bulić saw to it that the building’s façade was decorated with architectural and ornamental fragments originally from Salonitan sites and from the Split cathedral’s old Romanesque campanile. Bulić’s favoured motif of the Good Shepherd stands out in the aedicule on the house’s southern façade, whence a garden extends with a fountain and a promenade between stone columns featuring stylistically different capitals. Stone monuments that did not originate in Manastirine are also exhibited in the garden: Early Christian sarcophaguses, altars, and components of architectural sculpture and inscriptions.

The so-called Guest Room was on the ground floor; it was intended for visitors to Salona, where they could gain their first knowledge about Salona before touring the site, and then, after returning, rest and contemplate their impressions in the serenity of the room. Inspired by what they had seen and delighted by home-made specialties in the local diner, Ad Bonum Pastorem, many left gracious notes in the guest book. The Guest Room’s walls and ceiling were adorned with Early Christian motifs in the Pompeiian style. The central motif on the ceiling was the Good Shepherd, encircled by Christian symbols: a peacock, fish, dove, dolphin and grape vines. The walls featured verses by the Roman poet Horatio, extolling rural life and the beauty of the countryside. A stone table resting on capitals and column bases stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by several hand-crafted wooden chairs and two sarcophagus bottoms. An exceptionally valuable feature of the Tusculum was the Biblioteca Patria, Bulić’s personal library. It was housed on the first floor, in a room adorned with paintings of the Salonitan martyrs, Venantius, Anastasius and Domninus, painted by the Dominican friar Vinko Draganja. Here visitors could browse through books of paramount importance to Croatia’s cultural heritage, such as Robert Adam’s work on Diocletian’s Palace.

The Tusculum began to lose some of its lustre after Bulić’s death. Even his library, which could not be adequately protected there, was transferred to the Museum and became a part of its inventory in 1963. In the early 1980s, the gradual renovation of the building’s interior and grounds began. On the 50^th anniversary of Bulić’s death in 1984, the Guest Room was transformed into the Memorial Room, and in 2008 its original appearance, including the painting and stone furniture, were restored. Paintings and illustrations from Bulić’s time in authentic frames hang on the northern and eastern walls, while the periods of Bulić’s life and career in Salona are depicted in the photographs on the western and southern walls of the room. Some of his manuscripts, books and personal effects are displayed in a horizontal display case. One of the most important moments in Bulić’s career was captured in a photograph from the opening of the First International Congress of Early Christian Archaeology, held in Split and Solin in 1894. Certain archaeological exhibits were also returned to the room: urns, amphorae, a fragment of a marble column from Marusinac with plant motifs and a copy of an altar screen fragment bearing the name of the Croatian Duke Trpimir. Sculptor Ivan Bulimbašić used the lower section of a helical classical column with its base for the new pedestal under the bust of Frane Bulić. A new exhibit is the La Filotecnica brand theodolite, a land surveying instrument used by Bulić during archaeological excavations.

The reception area also contains valuable exhibits: the original parts of floor mosaics (two simple black and white and, most notably, a multi-coloured mosaic with an image of deer), two marble sculptures of a woman and a man and two stone urns in the form of sarcophaguses with epitaphs. Danish architect Ejnar Dyggve, a noteworthy explorer of Salona and honorary citizen of Solin, is memorialized on a plaque on the ground floor of the Tusculum. It was installed on the centenary of his birth in 1987. From 1929 to 1932, Dyggve, as an employee of the Museum, lived in the Tusculum with his family and would later say that his was the loveliest period of his life.

Upstairs there are three rooms. The largest, which once housed the Biblioteca Patria, now serves as a conference room with a handy library. The two smaller rooms are used for the work of museum curators and other employees. The attic has a section for the preparation of technical documentation on sites and finds and a space for the technical staff (architect, conservator and draftsman). The building’s cellar functions as a depot to store stone monuments. Conservation and restoration works are carried out in indoor and outdoor workshops, with an emphasis on the preliminary processing of finds and restoration of stone. The cottage which until recently was used to accommodate the Salona site’s watchman has been remodelled into an additional workshop. The room on the upper floor of the eastern wing of the Tusculum now serves multiple purposes: additional exhibitions, presentations, lectures, screenings, educational workshops, etc.

Unlike all other museum collections in which only one curator is employed, the Salona Collection has two: senior curator Jagoda Mardešić and senior curator Ema Višić-Ljubić.