With the death of Henry of Carinthia, the Margraviate of Carniola fell to Habsburg in 1335 and Ljubljana became the capital of the territory - called a duchy from 1364 - which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and was considered part of Inner Austria. On 5 October 1821, the Krainer Landtag decided to establish a regional museum, the Carniolan Estates Museum - today it is considered the oldest scientific and cultural institution in Slovenia. Emperor Franz I granted permission to purchase the Sigmund Zois von Edelstein mineral collection. Renamed the Carniolan National Museum in 1826, it was opened in Ljubljana on 4 October 1831, in the building of the Caesareo Regii Lyceum Labacense, next to St. Nicholas Cathedral. The naturalist Franz von Hohenwart donated large parts of his natural history and mineral collection to the museum. In honour of Rudolf, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the museum was renamed the Carniolan Regional Museum - Rudolfinum in 1882. In the same year, the museum acquired the freshly recovered bronze wader situla of Illyrian origin, dated to the 5th century BC and assigned to the Hallstatt period. It is now one of the most important exhibits in a museum that opened on 2 December 1888, became the National Museum of Yugoslavia after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was founded in 1918 in 1921, and has been the National Museum of Slovenia since Slovenia's independence in 1991. Its logo refers to the Situla of Vaj. The coin designer takes up the four concentric arcs of the logo as a motif and adds the Slovenian and German historical names and the founding year of the museum to form concentric circles. |
