Country: Slovenia
Distance: 1,169 km
Travel time: 28 days
On postcard: Ljubljana Castle
Ljubljana Castle (Slovene: Ljubljanski grad) is a medieval castle in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is located on Castle Hill (Grajski grič) overlooking the old town.
History
According to archeological surveys, the area of the present castle has been settled continuously since 1200 BC, when the first settlements and later fortifications were built.
The oldest mention of Ljubljana Castle is inscribed on a parchment sheet Nomina defunctorum (names of the dead), which is kept by the Udine Cathedral Archive. It dates from 1112 till 1125. It mentions the nobleman Rudolf of Tarcento, a laywer of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, who had bestowed a canon with 20 farmsteads beside the castle of Ljubljana (castrum Leibach) to the Patriarchate. In 1144, Ljubljana Castle was mentioned as a property and the seat of the Carinthian dukes of the House of Spanheim. In 1335, it became property of the House of Habsburg. In 15th century, it was almost completely demolished and rebuilt with a complete wall and towers at the entrance, where a drawbridge was placed. A chapel was also built at that time. In the 16th and 17th centuries, other objects were gradually built.
Because it was not a home of a ruler or another important noble person and because a fortification in the area was no longer required, the castle started to lose its importance. The maintenance costs were too high so the castle began to crumble. In the 19th century, the castle was redesigned partially as a prison and partially as a military stronghold, making it less popular among the citizens. Several famous people were jailed in the castle, including the Italian revolutionary hero Silvio Pellico, the Hungarian Prime Minister Lajos Batthyany and the Slovene author Ivan Cankar.
In 1905, the castle was bought by Municipality of Ljubljana, on the explicit wish of the mayor, Ivan Hribar, who planned to establish a city museum in it. The plan was however not carried out. Instead, the city decided to settle poor families into it. The residents stayed there until the mid-1960s, when preparations for renovation of the castle began.
At the end of the 1960s, the long and extensive renovation works started. The whole renovation took more than 35 years. In the 1990s, the use of the castle as a place for weddings and cultural events began.
The Ljubljana Castle funicular, a funicular railway to the top of Castle Hill, was built in 2006 and brought to service in 2007.
The hill also features a 1974 monument by the sculptor Stojan Batič dedicated to the Slovene peasant revolts (especially to the Slovene peasant revolt of 1515 and the Croatian and Slovenian peasant revolt of 1578).
