The Collection of Musical Instruments in Ptuj Castle is of national importance. With over 300 musical instruments for playing art and folk music, it is the most extensive collection of its kind in Slovenia. The collection also includes sheet music and instrument making tools. A Roman double flute from the 2nd or 3rd century is … Read more

Ptuj has a long tradition of having city musicians. In the late Middle Ages, the town already had a Civic Guard with instrumentalists.The oldest depiction of the Civic Guard Band, which shows five musicians playing around a table, dates from 1815. A copy of the relief can be seen as part of the recreated beer … Read more

A civic brass band was founded in Ptuj in 1855. The band performed at town festivities, promenade concerts, and performances in the Ptuj City Theatre. The brass band soon evolved into the Brass Orchestra, which is still active today.The musical instruments on display date from the second half of the 19th century to the mid-20th … Read more

One of the most important exhibits of the Ptuj museum is a tibia, a rare archaeological find dating from the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The ancient double flute, artfully crafted from bone coated with thin layers of bronze and brass sheeting, must have already been a treasure in the time of Roman Poetovio. The … Read more

Bowed String Instruments Between the 16th and 18th centuries, many forms of bowed string instruments called violas were in use. They differed in shape, size, tuning, number of strings, and the way they were played. In a separate display case on the right, we have a viola d’amore, a product of the great Prague instrument … Read more

All keyboard instruments have a keyboard, a row of levers that are pressed by the fingers, but they differ in their mechanics.The clavichord has mechanics with tangents, which give it a gentle, quiet sound. The clavichord of the Ljubljana organ builder Johann Georg Eisl from 1757, so far the only known clavichord maker in Slovenia, … Read more

The oldest hammer action piano in this room is an instrument made by Karl Benedickt of Graz between 1785 and 1790. The piano by the great Viennese master Ferdinand Hofmann, made around 1795, also belongs to the golden age of Viennese classical music. To the left of them is an early 19th-century grand piano, one … Read more

This didactically designed exhibition provides an insight into the craft of the Celje Baroque pipe organ builder Joannes Franciscus Janeček. The Czech-born master worked at a time when churches were being equipped with organs, and the nobility was commissioning salon positives for castle chapels and homes. Janeček created around 150 organs, a third of which … Read more

The tombstone with a relief depiction of Knight Friedrich IX, born around 1403 and died in 1438, once stood above the tomb of the Lords of Ptuj in the church of the Dominican Monastery in Ptuj.Friedrich IX of Ptuj was the last male heir of the Lords of Ptuj, a noble family which established itself … Read more

THE COLLECTION OF ARMS at Ptuj Castle is of national importance, as it comprises more than 500 pieces of various cold weapons, firearms, hunting and sporting weapons, and protective equipment dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Most of the exhibited items come from the nearby Vurberk Castle, while some pieces were collected by … Read more