Famous Landmarks in Ljubljana
A Baroque old town circles a medieval hilltop castle above the Ljubljanica River.
Ljubljana's principal landmarks sit within a few minutes' walk of each other along the Ljubljanica River, which loops through the old town below a wooded hill. The castle occupies that hill, its walls rebuilt and extended in stages from the medieval period through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so it reads less as one building than as a long accumulation. Down in the square below, a Baroque cathedral with a green dome and twin towers stands near a town hall that began Gothic and was reworked with Venetian-influenced Baroque detailing, both facing onto Cyril and Methodius Square by the central market. A short walk along the river reaches a squat reinforced-concrete road bridge from the early twentieth century, decorated in the ornament of the Art Nouveau style then current in Vienna, marking the city's decades inside the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Ljubljana Castle
probably 11th century, rebuilt 12th century
The complex crowns a hill directly above the old town's rooftops, its towers and walls the result of staged rebuilding so the outline reflects work from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries rather than one building campaign.
Originally a medieval defensive structure, probably raised in the eleventh century and rebuilt in the twelfth, the complex became seat of the lords of Carniola from the first half of the fourteenth century. It reached its current outline in a near-complete fifteenth-century overhaul, though most of the standing buildings date to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Used for various other purposes since the early nineteenth century, it now serves as a cultural venue.
- It is depicted on the city's coat of arms together with a dragon perched on top of it.
- Most of the buildings visible today are not medieval at all but date from a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rebuilding that followed a near-total fifteenth-century overhaul.
Photo: Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Dragon Bridge
1901
The bridge is a single arch cast in reinforced concrete but finished with the decorative detailing of the Vienna Secession style, making it one of the style's recognized examples applied to bridge engineering.
Built at the start of the twentieth century, when the city lay within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the bridge carries a road across the Ljubljanica River between two streets just north of the central market. Executed in reinforced concrete, it ranks among the notable early examples of that construction method combined with Vienna Secession styling, and it is protected today as a technical monument while still carrying motorized traffic.
- It is protected as a technical monument for being among the finer early reinforced-concrete bridges built in the Vienna Secession style.
Photo: yeowatzup (CC BY 2.0)
Ljubljana Cathedral
1706 · Andrea Pozzo
The building is identified by its green dome flanked by twin towers, rising over Cyril and Methodius Square next to the central market and the town hall.
The present building, officially named Saint Nicholas's Church, replaced an earlier Gothic church on the same site and took its current Baroque form in the early eighteenth century, work associated with the Italian architect Andrea Pozzo, who died in 1709. It stands on Cyril and Methodius Square beside the central market and the town hall, functioning today as the city's cathedral.
- It began as a Gothic church before being entirely rebuilt in the Baroque style in the early 1700s.
- Its official name is Saint Nicholas's Church, though it is commonly known simply as the Cathedral.
Photo: Žiga (Public domain)
Ljubljana Town Hall
1484 · Peter Bezlaj
The facade carries a Baroque gable front, an open loggia, and a three-part staircase added in a 1717-to-1719 renovation, and a copy of an ornate Baroque fountain stands just outside the entrance.
The original Gothic building of 1484 was probably designed by the builder Peter Bezlaj. Between 1717 and 1719 it received a Venetian-inflected Baroque renovation carried out by the builder Gregor Macek Sr. to plans by the Italian architect Carlo Martinuzzi and his own designs, adding the gable front, loggia, and staircase. In the 1920s a monument to a Yugoslav king was placed at its entrance, designed by the architect Joze Plecnik, then removed and destroyed by occupation authorities in 1941.
- A monument to a Yugoslav king once stood at its entrance until occupying authorities destroyed it in 1941.
- The Baroque fountain outside is a replica; the original, finished in 1751, is kept in the National Gallery.
Photo: Berthold Werner (CC BY-SA 3.0)
History
The area was Roman Emona before Ljubljana is first mentioned in written record in the early twelfth century as the historical capital of Carniola, a Habsburg-ruled crownland from the Middle Ages until 1918. The fortress on Castle Hill, probably built in the eleventh century, was rebuilt in the twelfth and then extensively reworked in the fifteenth, with most of its present buildings dating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by which time it had long served as the seat of the Carniolan lords. The Gothic town hall of 1484 was given a Baroque, Venetian-inspired refit in 1717 to 1719, around the years the Gothic cathedral nearby was rebuilt in Baroque form under plans tied to the architect Andrea Pozzo. The Dragon Bridge, raised over the Ljubljanica in the early 1900s in reinforced concrete and Vienna Secession ornament, belongs to the city's last Austro-Hungarian decades before Habsburg rule ended in 1918.