Going underground at the Velenje Coal Mining Museum

What the underground tour is like

You go in as the miners did, in work clothes and a helmet, with a packed lunch in your pocket. The lift, from 1888, is the oldest still working in Slovenia, and it drops 160 m. At the bottom a guide leads you past 18 scenes with 15 miner figures brought to life with light and sound. You meet the hewer, the surveyor, the overseer and the boy helper, see how a tunnel was driven and coal moved, and hear about the mining disaster of 1893.

The moment everyone remembers is the lunch break, 160 m down, with bread, Carniolan sausage and juice in what the museum calls the deepest dining room in the world. You then walk beside what the museum describes as the world’s thickest coal seam and ride back on the deepest railway line in Slovenia. The guided tour takes 75 minutes.

Booking, times and tips

Book ahead, because you can’t get in without an appointment. Individuals have tours at 9:00, 12:00 and 14:00, Tuesday to Saturday, and the underground part is for over-sixes. I’d take the first tour and keep the afternoon for the castle and the lake. If you enjoy this kind of visit, Koroška has the Mežica mine under Mount Peca, and at the other end of the country there’s the Idrija mercury mine, a World Heritage Site. Coal also shaped Zasavje, in the Sava valley, where Trbovlje tells the story in its museum and the old Njiva miners’ colony, and Hrastnik, mined since 1822, has a free museum.

What’s above ground

Outside there’s a miners’ flat from before 1930, the white and black changing rooms, the washroom and the story of the leap over the leather apron, the ritual that welcomes a new miner into the trade. The museum park displays the Dominion winding engine, which handled more than 85 million tonnes, a geological column of the Šalek valley and, since 2025 for the mine’s 150th anniversary, an exhibit 18 m wide with an excavator, a chain conveyor and roof supports.

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A museum in the old Škale shaft

The Coal Mining Museum of Slovenia was founded in 1957 in the castle of Velenje, and in 1999 its mining collection moved to the Old Shaft, also known as the Škale shaft, which the mine had restored. Objects gathered over decades from every coal mine in the country came with it. In 2012 a fire destroyed much of the underground section, and after restoration new scenes and audiovisual displays were added without losing the feel of the pit. Since 2007 the complex has been a cultural monument of local importance.

The Velenje mine in numbers

The mine works Slovenia’s largest coal deposit, with lignite seams more than 160 m thick, from which over 268 million tonnes have already been extracted. Franc Mages discovered the main seam on 11 April 1875, the date taken as the mine’s birthday, and the first shaft ran from 1887 to 1893. In the mid-1980s output peaked at 5 million tonnes a year, three quarters of Slovenia’s coal. Today all the lignite goes to the power station at Šoštanj.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Coal Mining Museum and pick one that fits your day.

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