History of Ljubljana

There is a legend that Jason, a Greek prince, founded Ljubljana.  The story goes that Jason and his Argonaut buddies were fleeing King Aites; the king was chasing them in an attempt to recapture the golden fleece that the former had stolen.  Jason made his way up the Danube to the Sava, then finally up the Ljubljanica River.  At Ljubljana, Jason encountered a dragon, whom he found and killed.  This "historic" battle earned the dragon a place on the city's crest - atop the castle.

Archaeological research has shown that the first residents of the area lived in the Ljubljana Marsh, an infertile bog, starting about 2000 BCE (during the Bronze Age).  These inhabitants lived in homes built on wooden stilts in the marsh; why they chose to live in such a weird locale is beyond me.  More than likely, this group was a collection of hunters and fishermen.  Next came the Illyrians, who would lend their name to a French-inspired short-lived pan-Slavic country in the 19^th c. CE.  The Illyrians were an Indo-European people who lived in tribal societies on the Balkan peninsula.  They were followed by the Celts, who established a settlement in the 4^th c. BCE.  Little is known about the daily life of these groups in the Ljubljana Basin.  

The Romans arrived in the area, south of the present-day Ljubljana, around 50 BCE to establish Julia Aemona.  The settlement, known as Emona, grew to include between 5000 and 6000 residents who were merchants, craftsmen, war veterans and officials of the Empire.  The settlement had many of the luxuries of a modern Roman city, include a water and sewage system, centrally heated houses and a fortress wall.  Legend states that Emperor Augustus laid the wall's cornerstone in 14 BCE.  Shown below, remnants of this wall can be seen southwest of the Cankarjev dom in the Centar part of the city.  Another remnant of the Roman presence is the Citizen of Emona; a copy located in Kongresi trg, while the original resides in the Narodni Muzej.  Unearthed in 1836, it is believed to exist from the 4th c. CE.  The city had its own deity, the goddess Equrna, who the residents worshipped on the Marsh.

The settlement lay on ancient trade routes, including those linking Roman Pannonia with the northern colonies in Naricum and Aquiliea.  Because of this location, therefore, the settlement was important to the Roman Empire.  It played a vital defensive role in a number of local wars, but finally was conquered finally in 452 CE by Attila the Hun, and lay in ruins for a number of decades.

Migrating in the 6^th c. CE from the Carpathia region, the Slavs were the next group to arrive.  They used the plateau of the current Castle Hill to build a defensive fortification, which served as the center for a medieval city.  Around 1000 CE, Ljubljana became the seat of the Breže-Seliški feudal lordship.  But then sometime in the 11^th c. CE, the city fell under the ownership of the Carinthian Dukes of Spanheim.  In 1144, Ljubljana was first mentioned in written text as Laibach (its German name); two years later, it was mentioned as Luwigana, its early Slovene spelling.

By the beginning of the 13th c. CE, the town had become the capital of the Carniola province.  In 1220, it minted its own coins, probably through a grant to establish and enforce township ordinances and privileges.  Hapsburg rule came to the town in 1335, which brought thirty-nine further privileges, mainly in the trading realm.  It was also made an episcopal seat.  This move attracted a variety of nationalities, including Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Englishmen and Swedes.  A Jewish quarter developed as the city became an important trade center.  In 1511, a strong earthquake rattled the city, destroying most of its medieval wooden structures.  The city rebuilt with bricks and mortar and again walled itself - this time to protect itself from threatened Turkish invasions.  It must have worked, because the Turks never captured the city.

Ljubljana was a center of the Slovenian Reformation movement, which gave it a secondary school, public library and printing house.  The latter produced Primož Trubar's Katikizem (Catechism) and Abecednik (Spelling Guide) as well as Jurij Dalmatin's Bible in Slovene.  The Hapsburgs brought in the Jesuits to revert the population to Catholicism; they added a grammar school to the educational landscape.  Later, in the Renaissance period, Ljubljana served as a cultural center.  It was home to a number of trades and crafts, as well as artisans.  In the 17th c. CE, the city took on a Baroque feel with the addition of third floors to many buildings (a classic Baroque architectural trait). In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte made Ljubljana the capital of his Illyrian province experiment.  This occupation catalyzed the development of the city as the capital of the Slovene culture.  School children began to be taught in the vernacular, rather than in Latin.

In 1895, another earthquake struck the city, destroying most of the Renaissance and Baroque architecture.  Czech and Austrian architects oversaw the reconstruction, turning the city into an Art Noveau haven.  It was during this period that a number of utilities were added to Ljubljana: water supply (1890), electricity (1897), sewage (1898) and a tramway (1901).

World War I had a marginal effect on the city.  During the interwar period, architect Jože Plečnik created many new buildings that blended the Latin Baroque and German Art Noveau styles.  His masterpieces can be seen all over the city.  During World War II, Ljubljana fell first under Italian, then German, occupation.  The latter encircled the city with barbed wire, creating a de facto urban concentration camp.  

After the war, Ljubljana, and Slovenia for that matter, joined the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  The early period brought a significant amount of growth to the area, as it specialized in manufacturing and banking.  However, the Slovenes were tacit participants and, as Yugoslavia became more Serbian after Tito's death, the support for the pan-Slavic federation waned.  In fact, Tito died in 1980 in Ljubljana during a visit to the executive retreat at Bled.  On 23 December 1990, Slovenes voted overwhelmingly for independence.  On 26 June 1991, the country ceded from Yugoslavia and Ljubljana became the capital of the new country.  In fact, the independence was announced from the balcony of the university's main building, shown below.

Proceed to the West Bank of the Ljubljanica River or return to the Ljubljana Main Page.

Email comments to the site's creator