Private Military Museum Offers Plenty Rare Uniforms
A private military museum, located in an old fort in Lokev in SW Slovenia, boasts just under 160,000 items, mainly linked to military history and Slovenia. Among its most treasured items are military uniforms, some of which are unique in the world.
However, because of its size, the museum, ran by Srecko and Irena Roze, can only display 4,537 items, mainly connected to the First and Second World Wars.
"I am in love with the history of my nation," Roze explained his penchant for collecting historical items, which at the last counting resulted in 140,247 military and 17,812 archaeological items.
The collection on display in the fort focuses on Austro-Hungarian and Italian items, mainly from the WWI Isonzo front, and on Nazi, Fascist and Partisan items from WWII.
Irena Roze told STA that the oldest uniform in the collection was that of a dragoon guard from 1740, while the most recent was a Yugoslav army pilot suit, worn during Slovenia's war of independence in 1991.
Other rare uniforms include one from the Hungarian body guard of the Emperor Franz Josef, an Austro-Hungarian field marshal, a Russian Tzarist general and some others, Roze added.
The museum attracts over 10,000 visitors every year and also displays archaeological findings from Lokev and its vicinity.
It, for example, houses several stone-age spears and bones, as well as a ruler used by one of Slovenia's best-known poets Srecko Kosovel (1904-1926).
The museum, located in a fort built in 1485 to stop the invading Turkish forces, opened in 1994.
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