This month's museum pick...

The Maritime Museum, Piran, Slovenia

By Patrick Totty

One of the best things to happen during the acrimonious breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s was that Slovenia, the northwesternmost province, managed to emerge from all the subsequent bloodletting relatively intact.

It was the first province to secede, declaring independence in June 1991 and then enduring a 10-day siege by the Yugoslavian federal army. After that, Yugoslavia left the Slovenes alone.

Apparently Slovenia’s relative remoteness from the center of things, combined with its astute and non-militant handling of an increasingly distracted central government, earned it immunity from full-tilt ethnic cleansing or vengeance bombings.

Also, Slovenia’s proximity to Italy and Hungary – two countries that knew a lot about tourist infrastructure – and its population’s own entrepreneurial instincts meant the new country was in a good position to sell itself as a travel destination.

As such, Slovenia, with its modest coastline along the Adriatic Sea just south of Trieste, is one of the Mediterranean’s last undiscovered tourist gems. The jewel of that shoreline is Piran, a walled town of 17,000 people that hugs the tip of a hilly, wooded peninsula that juts into the sea.

With its medieval architecture dating back more than 800 years, its generally temperate climate, local casino and spots venues, fertile hinterland of thriving wineries and olive orchards (the local vinos of note are the white Bela Malvazija and the red Refosk), and a populace that hasn’t learned how to take visitors for granted, Piran may be just the thing for travelers looking to experience a walled town that hasn’t been inundated by 21^st century attitude.

That’s not to say that Piran lacks amenities – there are a few decent hotels and restaurants (see our links below), and Slovenia in general has a fairly high standard of living. But Piran, which touts itself as being Slovenia’s most tourist-oriented town, is still a bit retro about touristy things, so you may find yourself missing being inundated by tshotchke emporia, price gouges and generic Louis Vuitton/Hermes/Chanel/Cartier shops.

The point to Piran is that you can amble about a medieval walled town that is still immersed in a workaday reality and hasn’t yet become a city that has outlived all its reasons for existing, except for tourism. That quotidian reality is what makes Piran’s Sergej Masera Maritime Museum a must-see on your visit to the city. Housed at the harbor’s edge in a pink-colored three-story building, the museum commemorates a maritime tradition that extends from the Middle Ages through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the mid and late 20^th century and Slovenia’s eventual independence.

Piran’s location on the Adriatic as the port for a productive agricultural region by itself would have made the town important. But it’s also located near several salt pans that from the Middle Ages on were significant sources of wealth. The Secovlje salt pans provided a dependable source and stream of fungible wealth for the region and its trans-Adriatic trading partners.

Unlike salt mines of old where miners, usually slaves or prisoners, had to dig underground in stressful conditions, mining salt pans was far more benign. It called for open-air labor that, although tedious and repetitious, did not require the sheer amount of toil to extract salt that pit mining did. For one thing, the sea itself constantly replenishes the salt pans. There’s no need to dig further and further into an excavation when the source of wealth you seek comes lapping up against your ankles of its own accord.