Selnica, Međimurje County

Selnica sits where the hills of Upper Međimurje begin to ease towards the Mura plain, with a local story shaped by St Mark’s parish, early oil production and privately preserved machinery. The settlement’s name appears explicitly in a 1501 parish register alongside the priest Martin and St Mark’s Church, whose musical heritage includes an organ installed in 1787. Oil is not a decorative footnote here: the Selnica field was worked from the 1850s until 1952, and an early-20th-century pipeline carried crude towards Mursko Središće. A present-day visit can centre on the Šardi Oldtimer Museum, a private collection of vintage vehicles and technology that welcomes visitors by prior arrangement. From Selnica, the story continues naturally in nearby Peklenica, where the Petroleum Memorial Park interprets organised extraction that began in 1856. This combination of church history, motoring memorabilia and petroleum heritage gives Selnica a noticeably different identity from the vineyard imagery associated with much of Upper Međimurje. It also works as a compact base for reaching Mursko Središće, the Peklenica oil site and other stops in the Međimurje Ecomuseum network.

Selnica’s identity rests on an unusual trio for a Međimurje village: the historic parish of St Mark, a long record of oil extraction and the Šardi family’s vintage-vehicle collection. The settlement is documented by name in 1501, while its surroundings mark the transition from the rolling Međimurje hills towards the lower country near the Mura. Selnica’s petroleum also travelled beyond the immediate field, as entrepreneur Wilhelm Singer had built a pipeline to Mursko Središće by 1905. Today, the Šardi Oldtimer Museum extends that technical story through preserved cars, motorcycles and machinery, with visits arranged in advance.