The Carinthian Museum was founded in 1953 by the National District Board of Maribor to preserve the cultural heritage of the Meža Valley, the Mislinja Valley and the Upper Drava Valley. Designing the museum was accomplished by Dr. Franjo Baš, Dr. Franc Sušnik, Professor Bogo Teply, Tončka Urbaso, Avgust Kuhar, Gregor Klančnik, members of the Association of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and Technicians of Slovenia (DRMIT), foresters and agriculturists of all three valleys.
The permanent display of several collections is at the Ravine Castle (Streiteben), which was built in the 16th century on a plateau. One hundred years later ironworks were set up below it on the Meža River, which then grew into famous steelworks.  The earliest image of the castle is preserved in Valvasor's work the "Topographia archiducatus Carinthiae" from the year 1688. The Thurni Counts, who purchased the castle in 1809, gave it its final image. The fields by the castle were transformed into a park in the year of the construction of the Celovec-Maribor railway.
During WWII a housekeeping school moved to the castle premises and in 1944 the German Army moved in. Soon after the end of the war it housed the classrooms of the grammar school and boarding school. The construction of the new grammar school building in 1953 gave the museum and library the opportunity to develop. 
The castle houses the permanent museum with several collections that display the economic development of the Meža, Drava and Mislinja valleys. Wood and water, iron and steel, and lead and coal were the main influences on the area and, therefore, shaped the way of life in the region. The development of the economy (timber, iron and coal mining industries) brought changes to agriculture and influenced the development of new activities. In the immediate vicinity of the castle is the open air museum with ethnological and technical displays. Thirty monumental sculptural works of the international symposium Forma Viva belong to the museum's collections as well; they are arranged in the urban environment of Ravne and other places in the Meža Valley. The Prežih House, the memorial museum of Prežihov Voranc, is an annex to the Carinthian Museum, and it professionally supervises the coal mining and ethnographical collections in Črna na Koroškem.