Ljubljana: history and heritage

About Ljubljana: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Ljubljana Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Ljubljana is a small capital with a long memory. People lived in houses on stilts on the marshes south of the city more than five thousand years ago; the Romans built Emona on the river; the Habsburgs ruled for almost six hundred years; and in the twentieth century one architect, Jože Plečnik, shaped the city so thoroughly that UNESCO now lists his work. The result is a city made for walking, along a river lined with willows and cafés.

At a glance

Names through history: Emona (Roman), Laibach (German), Ljubljana (Slovene).

Peoples: prehistoric pile-dwellers, Romans, Slavic settlers from the sixth century and today’s Slovenes.

One architect shaped a capital so completely that UNESCO now lists his streets, bridges and squares.

Shaped by: Rome, the Habsburgs (1335–1918), Napoleon’s Illyrian Provinces (1809–1813), Yugoslavia and, since 1991, independent Slovenia.

Geography: the gap between the Alps and the Karst, on the Ljubljanica, the old road from Italy to the Danube.

Ljubljana today

Just under 300,000 people live in the City Municipality of Ljubljana, according to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia: about one in seven Slovenians. Most are Slovenes, a South Slavic people, and the city also has Bosniak, Serbian, Croatian and Albanian communities. With some 60,000 students it is also one of the youngest-feeling capitals in Europe.

The pile-dwellers

The Ljubljana Marshes are among the prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps that UNESCO inscribed in 2011. Archaeologists found there a wooden wheel and axle around 5,000 years old, among the oldest yet discovered; it is now in the City Museum of Ljubljana.

Emona

Early in the first century AD the Romans founded Emona, a walled colony on the road from Italy to the Danube. Its grid still shapes the streets west of the river, and you can walk beside a reconstructed stretch of its wall at Mirje and see Roman houses and burials in the City Museum and the Emona archaeological park.

Habsburg Carniola

In 1335 the Habsburgs inherited Carniola, and Ljubljana, known in German as Laibach, stayed in their hands until 1918. The castle on the hill took its present shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From 1809 to 1813 the city was the capital of Napoleon’s Illyrian Provinces, which promoted the Slovene language in schools; a column on French Revolution Square still honours them. In the nineteenth century the poet France Prešeren gave the Slovene language its finest verse, and his poem Zdravljica is now the national anthem; his statue has stood on Prešeren Square since 1905.

Baroque and Art Nouveau

After an earthquake in 1511 the old town was rebuilt in Baroque style, with Italian masters such as Francesco Robba, whose Fountain of the Three Carniolan Rivers (1751) stands before the Town Hall. A second earthquake, in 1895, brought another rebuilding, this time in Vienna Secession and Art Nouveau: look up at the façades around Prešeren Square and along Miklošičeva. The Academia Philharmonicorum, founded in 1701, is the ancestor of today’s Slovenian Philharmonic.

Plečnik’s city

Between the two world wars the architect Jože Plečnik, who had worked in Vienna and at Prague Castle, returned home and remade Ljubljana: the Triple Bridge, the colonnaded Central Market, the river embankments, the Cobblers’ Bridge and the National and University Library. In 2021 UNESCO inscribed “The works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana: Human Centred Urban Design” as World Heritage. The University of Ljubljana was founded in 1919.

A European capital

Ljubljana became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 and of Yugoslavia, and in 1991 the capital of an independent Slovenia. It closed its centre to cars and was European Green Capital in 2016. On summer evenings the riverbanks fill with people, and the dragon on the Dragon Bridge, the city’s symbol, keeps watch.

Our advice: walk the Ljubljanica from the Central Market to the Cobblers’ Bridge and Trnovo, with Plečnik’s embankments on either side, then take the funicular to the castle for the view across the red roofs to the Alps.

Sources

Population: Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia (SURS), population by municipality. History: UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps; The works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana); City Museum of Ljubljana; Visit Ljubljana; European Commission, European Green Capital.

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