The Technical Museum of Slovenia

Bistra lies 22 km. south-west of the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, about half-way between the towns of Borovnica and Vrhnika. The headquarters of Slovenia’s technical museum, which was founded in 1951, is a mansion in the centre of an estate that was once a Carthusian monastery. It includes sections on agriculture, printing, water-power, textiles and fishing. The development of electric power is a particularly important theme. Exhibits include a steam engine and generating set installed in a power station in Ljubljana in 1897, and displays detailing the life and achievements of the Croatian-born physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) whose career was spent in the United States. The transport galleries include 40 bicycles, 50 motor cycles and 55 motor cars including a limousine that was used by Marshall Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980) president of Yugoslavia. Another section displays Slovenia’s forest industries and includes saw mills, workshops of carpenters, wheelwrights and coopers, and collections of traditional wooden household utensils.