"The National Museum of Slovenia today has a collection of more than 200 stone monuments with inscriptions.
They mostly come from the areas of Ljubljana (Roman Emona), Trojana (Atrans), from the villages of Zasavje, and from Lower Carniola as a whole. These were all areas that in the past represented the main regions of research for what was then the only scientific and cultural institution in Slovenia.
The creation of the lapidarium is closely related to the history of the museum, which was founded in 1821. Count Franz Hohenwart arranged the first epigraphic collection in the building of the Lyceum, where the museum was originally located, and he can rightfully be considered the founder of the museum lapidarium. Upon the construction of the new museum building during the period of the museum director Karl Dežman, the Roman stone monuments found their place in the ground floor and basement hallways, and because of lack of space, they were also built into the walls without any particular order along the ground floor hallways."
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"In May 2001, in the museum garden construction work began on the glass pavilion, which was officially opened in mid-2007. The newly acquired space, measuring 380 m2, serves to display all those monuments which had never been removed from the garden and placed inside the museum building; these items include: sarcophagi, urns, a large stele of the Mammii, and several pieces of Roman architecture.
In addition to these monuments, also all those monuments are exhibited in the pavilion for which no space was available in the corridors of the ground floor of the main building, including: milestones, boundary stones marking burial plots, several tombstones and fragments of funerary inscriptions, and also votive altars. Added to these are also those monuments which, in terms of content, harmonise well with the arrangement thus created; for instance, two large cinerary urns with inscriptions, a large funerary lion from Kostanjevica, and a boundary stone marking the border between Aquileia and Emona. The pavilion also houses mosaics from Emona, which are kept by the National Museum of Slovenia.
Since we wished, through the narrative effect of the monuments, to demonstrate to visitors aspects of life in the Roman period, we divided the lapidarium into two parts –the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Close to the entrance is displayed one of the historically most significant monuments – the boundary stone marking the limit between the landholdings of the Aquileians and the Emonans, which was discovered in 2001 on the bed of the river Ljubljanica at Bevke close to Ljubljana. The boundary stone dates from the beginning of the first century AD and reveals that the Aquileian administrative territory (ager) comprised Nauportus (present-day Vrhnika) and its appertaining area, extending considerably farther into the Ljubljana basin than had earlier been believed. The boundary stone also confirms that Emona was in Italy.
To the right of the entrance, milestones are displayed, and on the panels beside them full explanations are given about the Roman roads on the present-day Slovenian territory, as well as about the post and traffic in general. The National Museum of Slovenia keeps five milestones, the oldest of which is from the surroundings of Sti?cna and was placed in the mid-second century AD beside the road Emona-Neviodunum. Another dates from the time of Maximinus the Thracian and was discovered close to Neviodunum. Two poorly preserved milestones are from the time of the tetrarchy (305–306), and another, discovered beside Emona-Aquileia road, dates from AD 361–362.
After viewing the mosaics, the visitor passes on to the votive altars, of which the most prominent are those dedicated to Jupiter by the beneficiarii consularis stationed at Praetorium Latobicorum (Trebnje) and in Neviodunum (Drnovo near Krško). Other altars are dedicated by various dedicators to Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, although on some, mention is also made of rare deities, for instance the goddess Coryphaea, respectively Caelestis.
Into the world of the dead we are led by a large lion of marble from Pohorje, which was found at Stari grad above Podbo? cje, to where it had most probably been brought from one of the cemeteries of Neviodunum, where it had guarded a monumental Roman grave.
A considerable number of small stone cinerary urns of diverse shapes –and without inscriptions– from the Emona graveyards serve to indicate the burial plots and the manner of burial in the Roman period. The dimensions of the burial plots are indicated on two plot-measuring boundary stones from the museum’s collection.
On account of its size, the badly worn out funerary stele to Lucius Mammius Maximus could only recently be moved for final safe housing in the glass pavilion. This is the largest exhibit in the lapidarium, which, until not long ago, was deteriorating unprotected in the museum garden. Also on display is the damaged funerary stele to Tiberia, which suffered the same fate of having been exposed to bad weather in the garden.
Only two of the Roman cinerary urns bear inscriptions, one of which mentions the name of the son of a soldier of legion XIII Gemina, Aelianus. His father’s name is broken off.
The visit of the pavilion ends by walking past the roughly worked stone sarcophagi without inscriptions, most of which were discovered in Emona. The exhibited monuments communicate through the glass walls of the pavilion also to chance passers-by, who could read the texts on some of the panels from the outside. The pavilion is open to the public during the same hours as the main museum building; entry to the pavilion is free of charge."
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