Museum of the Forestry and Timber Industry

Established in 2001 by the Municipality of Nazarje, the Vrbovec Museum housed in the Vrbovec Castle is engaged in the protection, preservation and presentation of movable cultural heritage in the field of forestry and timber industry in the area of Upper Savinja Valley. Its collections are drawn mostly from the daily lives of simple people such as foresters, carters, sawyers and raftsmen, people for whom wood meant the only source of survival in the forest country, closed to other regions.

Exhibition

The museum displays the history of forestry and carpentry in the Upper Savinja Valley, a mostly wooded region fairly closed to traffic. Forests dictated a unique economic development of this area and had a decisive effect on the lives of local inhabitants. Until World War II, the survival of locals was closely connected with the exploitation of forests, as well as processing and sale of wood, which still represents an important natural resource. The introductory part of the permanent exhibition brings interesting discoveries about forests, trees and usefulness of wood while the central part of the exhibition shows the history of former foresters and carpenters in the Upper Savinja Valley: woodcutters, sawyers and raftsmen, horse and cart drivers, joiners, wheelwrights and carpenters.

The exhibition also touches on the progress brought into the forestry after the Second World War: construction of cableways and especially forest roads, and related introduction of modern machinery, the development of sawmilling, from manual wood cutting, over primitive water-based Venetian sawmills to electric sawmills, and the role of sawmills as the only possible way for transporting large quantities of wood to distant places.

External links

Museum of the Forestry and Timber Industry website