To mark the 140th anniversary of Ljubljana tobacco factory, the renovated Tobacco Museum has opened at the Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre.

The tobacco factory, founded on 19 January 1871, is part of Ljubljana's rich industrial heritage. To mark the 140th anniversary of its operation, Tobačna Ljubljana decided to renovate the Tobacco Museum, Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana and Tobačna Ljubljana's museum collection. Twenty years after the Tobacco Museum was set up, the renovated museum collection moved to new premises at the Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre at the end of March.

The tobacco factory was a city within a city; with its own kindergarten, staff library, fire brigade, mixed choir and so on. The first product to come from the hands of the mostly female workforce were Virginia cigars, popular at the start of the 20th century, and among the objects to be found on display at the Tobacco Museum, where the cult cigarettes Filter57 are also certain to be found. Otherwise, the tobacco collection on show comprises objects and materials that represent the past and lives of the factory and its workforce.

Alongside the Tobacco Museum, the Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre is also intended as a gallery, as space within the premises has been obtained by Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana. Via donations, Tobačna Ljubljana is supporting the programme at Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre in its entirety in 2011, which opened with an exhibition by globally-known artist Jan Fabre.

THE TOBACCO MUSEUM, Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana and Tobačna Ljubljana's museum collection

The beginnings of Ljubljana tobacco factory reach back to 1871, when, in the premises of an old sugar factory alongside the Ljubljanica river, production of Virginia cigars began, a product which was to become one of the factory's most popular for the next 80 years. The majority of the factory's workforce throughout its lifetime were women. Partly this was due to the fact that women were cheaper labour, and partly the causes lay in the technological process of hand-rolling cigars.

Prior to the First World War, Ljubljana tobacco factory stood apart from average industries in Ljubljana. The architectural characteristics of its buildings, which together formed a veritable mini city quarter, the social position of its female workers and the factory's products combined to create many a story that enriched the city's identity and recognition. Cigar girls or tobacco girls, as the female workers were called, had at a very early stage more social rights than male workers in other industries. Their status was tied to the position of workers in factories of state monopolies, where the workforce had the right to sick leave and later annual holiday leave, and the right to pensions upon retirement. During World War One, the tobacco factory shared the fate of many public buildings in Ljubljana. Part of the premises was turned into a military hospital, in which wounded soldiers, mainly those who had fallen on the Soča (Isonzo) Front, recovered. In the time of the first Yugoslav state, Ljubljana tobacco factory was the biggest such factory in the country, but its development stalled as the centralised monopoly government gave preference to factories in the southern regions of the country where tobacco was grown.

The Second World War virtually destroyed Ljubljana tobacco factory. The Italian state monopoly took the factory into its organisation and removed from it some modern machinery and most of its stocks of raw materials. The factory even endured the bombing of the city in March 1945 and awaited the end of the war partially demolished, without stocks and with gravely obsolete equipment.

In the decades after World War Two the factory underwent several cycles of technological and product development. A lesser but the best-known upgrade of the industrial park took place in 1957 when the first machine for joining filtered cigarettes was bought, upon which Filter 57 cigarettes were then made. In the mid-1960s there was a major modernisation of the machinery with the introduction of modern production technology, while at the start of the 1970s a modern production facility was built in the factory complex. In the second half of the 20th century the factory employed between 1,900 and 2,200 people. The social life of the workforce played an important role in the factory, as in their free time they played in factory bands, folklore groups and numerous sports clubs. Regular large-scale events in which the workers participated raised awareness of their belonging to a workers' collective in line with the ideology that united the working class into a special interest group.

Following the change in the political and economic system and Slovenian independence the ownership of Tobačna Ljubljana changed. A majority stake fell into the hands of the Reemtsma tobacco factory from Hamburg, and then to Imperial Tobacco in 2002. Two years later production ceased at Tobačna Ljubljana, while the company has kept its sales and marketing activities.

The Tobacco Museum – Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana and Tobačna Ljubljana's museum collection – is housed in the Tobačna 001 Cultural Centre. The facility is part of the original complex of Ljubljana tobacco factory. It was built in 1885 as a staff bathroom, in which showers and bathtubs were installed. The bathroom was closed in the 1970s, and the premises used as the factory canteen. Twenty years later the use of the space changed once more when the factory archive moved in and remained there until Tobačna Ljubljana left the old factory complex.