Must-see attractions in Eastern Slovenia

Housed inside 15th-century Maribor Castle, this museum has one of the richest collections in Slovenia, though much of it is not on show. The most…

Some 12km west of Celje, Šempeter is the site of a reconstructed Roman necropolis of wealthy families living in the area. Scattered around the grassy plot…

The Minorite Olimje Monastery, 3km southwest of Podčetrtek, was built as a Renaissance-style castle in about 1550. Its Church of the Assumption contains…

On the Savinja River's south bank, a stairway at Breg 2 leads to the Capuchin Church of St Cecilia. The Germans used the nearby monastery (now apartments)…

This is Slovenia’s largest skanzen (open-air village museum) with regular displays of traditional activities such as weaving, bread-making and stone…

One hour tours of 'Hell Cave' take you 1200m from the lower wet area to the upper dry section. Among the highlights, you'll pass a 4m-high waterfall, the…

This ambitious, though rather odd, museum is divided into several distinct sections including a water-based art installation, a collection of tree bark, a…

On the east side of Slovenski trg, this church reveals an array of styles from Romanesque to neo-Gothic. The church contains some lovely late-14th-century…

Dating from the early 14th century, this church has some magnificent frescoes and tombstones, but its greatest treasure is a 15th-century carved wooden…

Maribor's cathedral faces the square named after Anton Martin Slomšek (1800–62), the Slovenian bishop and politician beatified in 1999 and the first…

This restored 15th-century castle in Rogatec (7km east of Rogaška Slatina) has exhibits in 15 rooms on five floors. There's a 17th-century chapel with…

City Park is a lovely arboretum with 150 species of trees and three ponds. Here you’ll find the small but diverting Maribor Aquarium-Terrarium, with its…

West of Glavni trg, the Franciscan monastery has a rich 10,000-volume library of manuscripts and incunabula (including an original copy of the Bible…

The Church of the Holy Spirit (1494), once the chapel of the town hospital, has an interior covered with Gothic frescoes by Andrej of Otting. The 27…

Housed in 14 rooms of the Renaissance-style Murska Sobota Castle, a sprawling manor house from the mid-16th century, this museum tells the story of life…

The sombre Church of St Elizabeth, with a 50m-tall belfry, was built in 1251 and is the town’s oldest structure. Aside from the Romanesque nave and a…

This little trail in the forest, 1.5km above the Olimje Minorite Monastery, was laid out by the former local school principal and leads you past dozens of…

The neo-Gothic Evangelical Church (1910) is the main Lutheran seat in Slovenia. (The majority of Slovenian Protestants live in Prekmurje.) The interior,…

Looking like an oversized greenhouse (to let in the light), the Josip Pelikan Photo Studio is the complete studio of a pioneering early 20th-century Celje…

This vast 18th-century manor, built in baroque style, is 5km outside Makole (30km southwest from Ptuj). Guided tours around part of the palatial interior,…