| Description : 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 the 5th of 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 the 4th of October 1831, in the building of the Caesareo Regii Lyceum Labacense, next to
St. Nicholas Cathedral. The naturalist Franz von Hohenwart (1771‐1844) 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 Situla of Vaj 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 the 2nd of
December 1888, became the National Museum of Yugoslavia in 1921 after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was founded in 1918,
and has been the National Museum of Slovenia since Slovenia's independence in 1991. Its logo refers to the Situla of Vaj.
The four concentric arcs of the logo are taken up by the coin designer Lana Semečnik as a motif and
supplemented with the Slovenian and German historical names and the founding year of the museum to form concentric
circles: "KRANJSKI STANOVSKI MUSEJ KRAINISCH STÄNDISCHES MUSEUM" (Carniola State Musee), "1821 DEŽELNI
MUZEJ ZA KRANSJSKO" (1821 Regional Museum for Carniola), "KRAINISCHES LANDESMUSEUM RUDOLFINUM" (Carniolan Regional
Museum Rudolfinum) and "SLOVENIJA 2021" (Slovenia 2021) for the issuing country and the year of issue. The coin
was produced without mint mark by the Slovak mint Mincovňa Kremnica š.p. in Kremnica. |
