​Archaeological viewing depot is placed in a renovated, 18th century grainary, located at the Ptuj Castle hill.

The city of Ptuj (Poetovio) was the most important and largest Roman city in Slovenia in the 3rd century, as evidenced today by the rich archaeological collection of the Ptuj-Ormož Provincial Museum. Many stone monuments are exposed to the effects of weather and polluted air in the city center, which is why they lose their quality.

Not only the stone monuments but also other cultural monuments of national importance located at the Ptuj Castle require thorough structural and program renovations. Among them is the building of the castle granary from the second quarter of the 18th century. It was designed as a five-story building to store grain, and it also housed a large castle wine cellar.

For the Ministry of Culture, we have prepared a scheme design project for arranging the archaeological viewing depot of the Ptuj-Ormož Regional Museum in the renovated castle barn, which is a cultural monument of national importance. The viewing depot is a publicly accessible space where objects from a specific museum are stored in a concentrated manner. The goal is to display as much material as possible in a way that is acceptable for objects and interesting for visitors. In this way, the latter is given access to a larger volume of museum collections and an insight into the perspective and work of curators, restorers, and documentarians in collecting, storing, and researching.

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The spatial qualities of the existing castle granary are emphasized by the meaningful placement of the new program in the building. The uniform surface of the roof with the orderly rhythm of the shingles is preserved, so contents that do not need natural daylight are placed under it. A unique load-bearing wall with brick arches on three levels, which runs along the longitudinal bisector of the building, is exposed in the central part of the building by connecting several floors. Thus, we generate a multi-level volume that represents the 'heart of the object', and in it, we place the most valuable archaeological material of the large lapidary, i.e. the Orpheus monument.

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With the gradation of the ambient qualities of the space, the 'highlight' of the archaeological material also increases, from the large lapidary in the basement and ground floor, through the small lapidary and exhibition rooms on the upper floor to the more closed type of viewing depot in the attic.

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The archaeological viewing depot in the renovated Castle Granary will be the first model example with which the Ministry of Culture begins the arrangement of the modern museum infrastructure of Slovenian museums.

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Location: Ptuj, Slovenia

Project date: 2023

Site area: 15.000 m2

Building area: 1.306 m2

Total floor area: 5.875,8 m2

Type: Public/Culture

Client: Slovene Ministry of Culture

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Authors: SVET VMES, Ltd.: Jure Hrovat, mia; Ana Kreč, mia; Katja Paternoster, mia

Collaborators: Marko Kavčič, mia​; Andreas Cesarini, mia

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