Opening on Thursday and running until 24 November in Ljubljana, the exhibition, entitled Plečnik and the Sacred, is one of the most important projects promoting Slovenian culture this year.

Attending the opening of the exhibition in the Vatican at the end of June, Prime Minister Marjan Šarec said that Slovenia should be proud and happy as this was the first Slovenian exhibition in the Vatican.

The exhibition was put on display in the centre of the Vatican Museums, in a hall which houses the works by the greats such as Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Titian.

Curated by Peter Krečič, an expert on Plečnik's life and work who arranged the exhibition in cooperation with the Plečnik House curator Ana Porok, Plečnik and the Sacred presents the background of the artist's creative endeavours, featuring reproductions of his sacred objects.

The highlight includes the originals, the crown jewels of Plečnik's opus - chalices, ciboria and monstrances.

The Vatican Museums' reception of the display has been overwhelmingly positive, with visitors lingering to observe the details and enjoying a short film capturing Plečnik's church architecture, said Porok.

She also shared an interesting tidbit about a couple of visitors, newlyweds from the US who stumbled upon the exhibition by accident on their honeymoon.

The wife, Margaret Plecnik, later contacted the curators, wanting to buy a book about Plečnik's work for her father, Paul Plecnik, because it turned out that the famous architect was her great-great-uncle.

The exhibition has been put on by the Museums and Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML) in cooperation with the Slovenian Embassy to the Holy See, the Culture Ministry, the Ljubljana Archdiocese and Vatican Museums.