Ljubljana museums, from the world's oldest wheel to contemporary art

National Gallery and National Museum first

The National Gallery of Slovenia is my first stop. It has the biggest collection of Slovenian art anywhere, spanning the medieval period to the early 1900s, and the original Robba fountain stands in its glass entrance hall. It opens Tuesday to Sunday and the permanent collection costs €10, except on the first Sunday of each month, when entry is free.

A few steps away, in the Rudolfinum building, put up between 1883 and 1885, are the National Museum of Slovenia and the Natural History Museum. The National Museum is the country’s oldest cultural and scientific institution, founded in 1821 as the Provincial Museum of Carniola. Its treasures, according to the Ministry of Culture, are the Neanderthal flute from Divje babe cave, which the Tourist Board dates to about 60,000 years ago, the bronze Vače situla, the Egyptian mummy Ishata, the gilded statue of a citizen of Emona and finds from the Ljubljanica.

Architecture, railways and quirky collections

If architecture is your thing, Plečnik House in Trnovo is a must, and MAO, in Fužine Castle by the Ljubljanica, covers architecture, design and photography. The Railway Museum, at the old Šiška station, shows locomotives in a roundhouse, one of them from 1861. The Tourist Board also lists the Chocolate Museum, the Sports Museum, the Computer History Museum with over 6,500 items, the School Museum, the Theatre Museum, the House of Illusions and the House of the European Union, with a free multimedia tour. The castle adds the Museum of Puppetry. If you plan to see several in a day or two, do the sums on the Ljubljana Card first.

The City Museum and the marsh wheel

The City Museum fills the Auersperg Palace in the centre and tells Ljubljana’s story from the pile dwellers of 4500 BC to today, with remains of Roman Emona on show in the basement. It keeps the original of the oldest known wooden wheel with an axle, from between 3350 and 3100 BC, found in the Ljubljana Marshes. For me it is one of those objects worth a visit on its own.

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Modern art and the Metelkova quarter

The Museum of Modern Art, beside Tivoli, has been the national institution for 20th-century art since 1948. Its second venue, the Museum of Contemporary Art, opened in 2011 in the former barracks on Metelkova Street, with art from Eastern Europe. The same complex houses the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, which shows everyday life and runs craft workshops, and a branch of the National Museum. Next door is the autonomous cultural centre of Metelkova.

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