After the plans of František Edmund Škabrout of 1894, kept in the National Gallery of Slovenia.

The palace of the Narodni dom (National Hall) in Ljubljana was built during the general Austro-Hungarian expanse of national consciousness in the then bilingual Ljubljana. The goal was primarily to acquire representative spaces for the social and communal activities of Slovene citizens against Germanization. 

The building campaign was conducted by the Narodni dom Society. In 1893 a public call was announced for the project for a new building for the Society. The Czech architect František Edmund Škabrout (1858–1899) won the competition. The plan took account of the needs of all societies, it was representative enough and due to modest decoration was the cheapest, so that the construction could start in March 1894. The inauguration took place on the 10th of October 1896. The Narodni dom palace was the first public building in Ljubljana with electric lighting and the first public building to bear only the inscription in Slovene language: the “Narodni dom”.

Various Slovene societies were given their own premises in the palace: the National Reading Room, the Dramatic Society, the Sokol Gym Society, the Slovene Matica, the Cyril-Method Society, the Lawyers’ Society and the Slovenian Mountaineering Society. The ground-floor rooms were intended for a gym, bowling alley, café, restaurant and beer hall with a beer cooler. The cultural and social life of Slovene townspeople took place here. 

The National Gallery Society was founded on 18 September 1918. The Society’s art collection was growing and lengthy negotiations were necessary to enable the moving of its inventory to the National Hall in November 1926. The Hall had to be renovated for the needs of the gallery, and in 1928 the first permanent exhibition was inaugurated on the first floor of the Narodni dom. The next renovation of the premises took place as soon as 1933, when an expanded permanent collection was also opened. In 2016, the palace as a whole was completely renovated.  

The model of the National Hall Palace was made by craftsman Janko Samsa, born in 1949 in Stara Sušica in the Košanska Valley. His work is supported by a thorough research and study of the documentation, and is distinguished by the precise manufacture of individual parts and the use of selected appropriate materials.