Celje Regional Museum

The museum places much emphasis on Celeia and the Counts of Celje, right down to exhibiting 18 of the nobles' skulls in glass cases. (They were taken from the Minorite Church of Mary on Prešernova ulica in 1956, and the one belonging to Ulric is particularly gruesome.) The museum has a dozen rooms, many of them done up in styles from different periods (eg baroque, neoclassical, Biedemeier, Secessionist), painted with various scenes and filled with fine furniture.

Don't miss the 18th-century cabinet with hunting scenes inlaid with ivory, the 20-drawer 'bank' desk with a secret compartment and the neoclassical combined clock and music box that still works. But the museum's main attraction is the Celje Ceiling (Celjski Strop), an enormous trompe l'oeil painting in the main hall of columns, towers, angels frolicking skyward, noblemen and ladies looking down at you looking up. Completed in about 1600 by a Polish artist, the mural was meant to lift the ceiling up to the sky, and it does just that. Other panels represent the four seasons and show scenes from Roman and Greek mythology.