Murska Sobota, a town of castle and parkland by the Mura

What to see: the castle and Pomurje Museum

The present castle is Renaissance, from the 16th century, though a medieval fortress called Bel Mura already stood here in 1255. It passed to the Széchy family in 1365 and to the Szapárys in 1687, who laid out an English park and made it one of the most richly furnished castles on what is now Slovenian soil. In the 18th century it gained arcades, a chapel and a salon with illusionist paintings and a Rococo tiled stove. The eastern doorway, held up by two Atlases, may have come from a demolished palace in Budapest.

Since 1956 it has housed the Pomurje Museum, with an exhibition on life along the Mura from the earliest settlers, the Jože Kološa cabinet of photography and Drago Tršar’s portraits of Slovenian Impressionists. An avenue laid out in 1937 links the castle with the Evangelical church and is named after Primož Trubar, author of the first book in Slovenian, whose bust stands along it.

The park and two early 20th-century churches

The castle sits in a 9-hectare park, criss-crossed with paths and home to a children’s playground, planted in the English style in the 18th century, which the local tourist office counts among Slovenia’s largest and best-preserved castle parks. In the 1990s it gained an artificial lake and 19 stone lithopunctures by the artist Marko Pogačnik, and the Sobota Green Trail runs through it.

St Nicholas’s Cathedral is first recorded in 1297, but what you see is mostly the 1910-1912 rebuild, with its Art Nouveau facade and the Szapáry coat of arms. Nearby, the neo-Gothic Evangelical church of 1907-1910 has three towers on its front. On Victory Square, the tall white marble obelisk of 1945 is the town’s best-known symbol.

Expano, the lake and Rakičan

At the entrance to town, beside Lake Sobota, stands Expano, the pavilion Slovenia took to Expo Milano 2015. It moved here in 2019 and houses the regional tourist office and a virtual tour of Pomurje. It’s a good first stop to get your bearings before heading off to the spas, the vineyards or the Mura.

On the outskirts, Rakičan Manor, recorded in 1431 and rebuilt in Baroque style by the Batthyány family, keeps a well-tended English park. The tourist board suggests setting off from here on horseback.

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Is the River Mura worth the detour?

For me, yes. South of town the Mura winds between oxbows, flooded woodland and gravel banks, and the local tourist office calls it one of the richest ecosystems in Central Europe, with over 6,000 plant species and around 200 bird species. It forms the border with Austria and, from Gibina, with Croatia. Along its banks live 30 mammal species, 40 kinds of fish and more than a thousand beetles and butterflies, including 30 dragonflies, while yellow water-lilies, bladderwort and floating fern fill the backwaters. It’s an Alpine river that rises at the edge of the High Tauern and spreads gravel across the plain between the Slovenske Gorice and Goričko, which explains the flat, open landscape you see all around town.

Festivals, where to stay and nearby trips

At the end of June comes Sobota Days, with music and theatre in the castle and the park, and the town also runs the Sočna Vilica street-food festival. For a bed, most of the capacity is at the nearby spas, and from here you’re close to Goričko, with Grad Castle, and to the villages where prekmurska gibanica is baked.

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

Prekmurje’s capital in numbers

With 10,859 residents, or 18,317 across the whole municipality (SURS, January 2026), it’s a small place, though the main town of Pomurje. The government counts it among Slovenia’s main towns, although it carries little weight in tourism. In 2025 it recorded 11,028 arrivals, against 164,739 at nearby Moravske Toplice. It’s the natural capital of Prekmurje, the land across the Mura whose union with the rest of the Slovenes is marked every 17 August.

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