Otto von Gariboldi (1880-1965), an officer of the Austro‑Hungarian 5th Dragoon Regiment who lived in Maribor(Slovenia) until 1945, amassed an extraordinary hoard of about 40 000 hand‑painted tin and lead miniatures. Ranging from late‑17th‑century flats to early‑20th‑century fully‑rounded figures, they depict everything from Roman legionaries and Maria‑Theresian troops to market scenes, Biedermeier promenades and non‑European cultures, proving that tin soldiers were much more than military toys.
Today the entire collection forms the core of the Regional Museum Maribor's permanent display installed in the bastion corridors of Maribor Castle. It is the largest tin‑figure ensemble in south‑eastern Europe, comparable in scale to specialist museums in Germany, Austria and France.This impressive diorama shows an attempt to reconstruct the Ottoman siege of Maribor in 1532, with the castle modeled after a graphic by G. M. Vischer (post-1686).
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