Gorenjski muzej is a regional museum whose main exhibition venues are located in Kranj: Khislstein Castle, the Town Hall, the Ossuary, the Prešeren House, and the Prešeren Award Winners Gallery.
KHISLSTEIN CASTLE
The castle stands in the heart of Kranj’s old town, on a site that was fortified from Antiquity through the Early Middle Ages. The building developed between the 15th and 19th centuries, acquiring its present appearance in the 17th century. The renovated premises of Khislstein Castle house the new permanent exhibition Beautiful Gorenjska, which takes visitors on a journey through the major turning points in the life of the Gorenjska region, from the Early Middle Ages to the present day. The castle also hosts temporary exhibitions, a professional library, and an educational room for our youngest visitors.
TOWN HALL
The Town Hall in Kranj is one of the most important architectural monuments in Slovenia. On display are the Renaissance Hall and three permanent exhibitions: works by the academic sculptor Lojze Dolinar (1893–1970), the archaeological exhibition The Iron Thread, and the ethnological exhibition Folk Art in Gorenjska. On the ground floor, there is a gallery dedicated to temporary exhibitions.
PREŠEREN HOUSE
The house where Slovenia’s most important poet, France Prešeren, lived from the autumn of 1846 until his death on 8 February 1849, has been arranged as a memorial museum. The modern permanent exhibition, renovated in 2020, presents the poet’s life and work, with special emphasis on his creative output and poetry. Prešeren’s bedroom and his law office are furnished with original furniture. On the ground floor, a gallery hosts cultural-historical, fine art, photographic, and sculpture exhibitions.
OSSUARY
For more than a thousand years, the inhabitants of Kranj buried their dead around the Parish Church of St. Cantianus. The oldest graves date back to Late Antiquity, to the 7th century AD, while the most recent are from the 18th century. The earliest burials are associated with an early Christian church with a baptistery, while the last took place during the reign of Emperor Joseph II, when a new cemetery was established on the site of today’s Prešeren Grove. Due to limited burial space, a circular ossuary was built—at the latest in the 13th century—to store bones uncovered during the digging of new graves. Soon afterward, a Chapel of the Virgin Mary was constructed above it. First mentioned in 1317, it served as a cemetery church.
In 1463, the chapel was rebuilt by Henrik of the noble Egkh family, who owned a nearby house. The upper part of the chapel was used for funeral services, while the lower part served as a family tomb and as a repository for bones from the cemetery. The chapel burned down in 1668, was closed a few decades later, and was demolished and levelled in 1789. During archaeological research in 1972, the buried lower part of the chapel with the tomb and the Egkh family coat of arms dated 1475 was uncovered. A pile of bones from exhumed graves was discovered along the southern interior wall of the chapel. On the western side, the foundations of a Late Antique baptistery were found, while between the chapel and today’s parish church, remains of the walls of the circular medieval ossuary were identified.
The museum also has three dislocated units with permanent exhibitions, managed by the Bohinj Tourism Institute. These locations are the Tomaž Godec Museum in Bohinjska Bistrica, Oplen House in Studor, and the Alpine Dairy Farming Museum in Stara Fužina.