In 1951 City Museum Celje founded a department for the history of the National Liberation Struggle. After a decade of intensive progress the department developed into an independent cultural institution – Museum of Revolution Celje – in 1963. Its premises were in the building of the former Celje city hall (the city hall was in this building between 1830 and 1953), where it presented the history of Celje and its region from 1918 to 1945, and in the Old Pot, Celje prison, where 374 hostages were shot during the occupation in World War II.
Besides the permanent exhibition this period was marked by rich museological, publishing and publicising activities of professional museum workers.
With time the museum began to expand its collection and direct its attention also to collecting and researching life after 1945. It especially focused on school children, who were its most numerous visitors in the 1970s and in the beginning of the 1980s. The turning point in the museum’s development was the year 1979, when the museum acquired new premises, where the permanent exhibition on the development of Celje after World War II was prepared in 1987-1989.
Due to the expansion of work the museum was formally renamed as the Museum of Recent History Celje in 1991. This was the time when Slovenia became an independent country, and museum accordingly adopted a new collecting policy and began to search for a new role in its environment.
