Mislinja, the ironworkers' valley below Pohorje

Kope, skiing and summer on Pohorje

Kope is the ski area on this side of Pohorje, with about 12 km of runs, night skiing and a ski school, according to the resort. At Razborca, a settlement of Mislinja municipality, stand Lukov dom, for up to 180 guests, and Grmovškov dom, built in 2023, 50 m from the first lift. Above it, 1,543 m Črni vrh is, according to the municipality, the highest point of Pohorje, with views to Uršlja gora and the Kamnik-Savinja Alps.

Is Huda luknja worth it?

If you like caves, yes. It’s a cave in an isolated patch of karst, right by the Velenje to Slovenj Gradec road, and one of the oldest in Slovenia opened to tourists, back in 1895. The Speleos-Siga caving club looks after it and arranges visits; the municipality doesn’t publish opening hours. To me it’s worth a detour en route, not a trip of its own.

What to see in Mislinja: Roman villa, Gothic and ski jumps

At Zgornje Dovže, the Koroška regional museum excavated a Roman villa rustica between 1992 and 2002, the best-studied rural estate of the 1st and 2nd centuries in the region. St Achatius’s Church, from around 1470, is a fine piece of well-preserved Gothic, with a wooden ceiling painted around 1730 with flowers, the suffering Christ and angels. The village also has a ski jumping centre with four hills, a chairlift and floodlights, which hosted a Nordic Combined World Cup B and a ski jumping Continental Cup in 2000.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Mislinja for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.

Mislinja, a valley of ironworkers

According to SURS, the village has 1,817 residents and the municipality 4,489 on 1 January 2026, across eleven settlements and 112.1 km². Its 12,494 arrivals in 2025 put it top of the region. The valley lived off iron. The municipality recalls that there were many forges because there was plenty of water to drive the hammers, and that the entrepreneur Michelangelo Zois bought the ironworks in 1753 and handed them to his son Žiga Zois, the great patron of Slovenian culture, in 1770. What survives of the estate is the park, with trees about 250 years old that rank among the thickest in the country.

At the mouth of the Mislinjski graben gorge stands the birthplace of the painter Jože Tisnikar, a 17th-century building that started life as an ironworks and became a home in 1899. Today it holds the Kavka gallery and an information point, and runs an international painting colony in his name.

Where to eat and getting about

Gostilna Repolusk is an old carters’ inn that has been open since 1917, and the municipality singles out its mushroom soup, cheese štruklji and pohorski lonec stew. To get around the valley, the Štrekna is a tarmac cycle path on the old railway line, car-free and with tunnels. Mislinja pairs well with Velenje to the south and Uršlja gora to the north.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Mislinja on GetYourGuide.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Mislinja for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.