Slovenia
Who ruled Ljubljana?
Ljubljana dates from about 1144 CE. On our historical maps, the ground it stands on has been drawn inside 17 different states, empires and peoples. Read the history of Slovenia.
The history of Ljubljana
Ljubljana lies in a basin in central Slovenia, where the Ljubljanica river runs between a castle hill and the wide Ljubljana Marshes. The gap here is the easiest route from the Danube lands to the head of the Adriatic, so the site has carried traffic between central Europe and Italy since prehistory. For six centuries it was Laibach, a provincial capital of the Habsburgs; only in the twentieth century did it become the capital of a Slovene nation, first inside Yugoslavia and from 1991 as an independent state.
Emona and medieval Laibach
People lived in pile dwellings on the edge of the marshes from the fifth millennium BCE onwards, and a wooden wheel and axle found there, dated to about 3150 BCE, are among the oldest known anywhere. After the region came under Rome, a military camp was followed in the early first century CE by the walled colony of Emona, on the main road from Aquileia to the Danube. It was a town of perhaps 5,000 people within the Roman Empire, and its rectangular street grid still shapes part of the modern centre. Emona declined in the troubled fifth century and was sacked by the Huns in 452, and Slavs, ancestors of the Slovenes, settled the area from the late sixth century.
The medieval town grew beneath the castle hill and is first named in documents of the 1140s. It received town rights in the thirteenth century and in 1335 passed to the Habsburgs, who made it the capital of the duchy of Carniola within the Holy Roman Empire. A bishopric was founded in 1461. The town survived Ottoman raids in the fifteenth century, and after an earthquake in 1511 much of it was rebuilt. During the Protestant Reformation the preacher Primož Trubar, who worked in Ljubljana, published the first printed books in Slovene in 1550, laying the foundations of the written language. The Catholic Counter-Reformation then returned the town to the church, and the Baroque cathedral and churches of the old town date mostly from around 1700.
Habsburg province to national capital
Under Napoleon, Ljubljana was the capital of the French-ruled Illyrian Provinces from 1809 to 1813, a brief period remembered for encouraging the Slovene language in schools. Restored to the Habsburg Monarchy, it hosted the Congress of Laibach in 1821, where the conservative powers agreed to crush revolution in Naples. The railway from Vienna reached the city in 1849, and Slovene national feeling grew steadily, especially after Slovenes gained control of the city council in the 1880s.
A strong earthquake in 1895 damaged much of the town, and the rebuilding gave it many Vienna Secession buildings. When Austria-Hungary collapsed in 1918, Ljubljana became the chief city of the Slovene lands within the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia. Between the wars the architect Jože Plečnik reshaped its riverbanks, bridges and squares.
In April 1941 Italy occupied and annexed the city, and in 1942 surrounded it with a barbed-wire fence some 30 kilometres long to cut off the resistance. German forces took over after Italy's surrender in 1943. After the war Ljubljana was capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia within Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia. Slovenia declared independence on 25 June 1991, and after a ten-day war it left the federation. The country joined the European Union in 2004. Ljubljana, with about 300,000 inhabitants, is the capital of Slovenia and by far its biggest city.
In pictures
2 images · scroll →Timeline
22 periods- 123,000 BCE – 10,000 BCENeanderthalMap of 123,000 BCE →
- 10,000 BCE – 5000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 10,000 BCE →
- 5000 BCE – 4000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapunder Cardial Ware cultureMap of 5000 BCE →
- 4000 BCE – 1500 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 4000 BCE →
- 1500 BCE – 500 BCEIllyriansMap of 1500 BCE →
- 500 BCE – 400 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 500 BCE →
- 400 BCE – 323 BCEHallstatt cultureMap of 400 BCE →
- 323 BCE – 1 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 323 BCE →
- 1 BCE – 300 CERoman EmpireMap of 1 BCE →
- 300 CE – 400 CERome (Maximian)Map of 300 CE →
- 400 CE – 500 CEWestern Roman EmpireMap of 400 CE →
- 500 CE – 600 CEOstrogothsMap of 500 CE →
- 600 CE – 800 CESlavsunder Eastern Roman EmpireMap of 600 CE →
- 800 CE – 900 CESlavonic tribesMap of 800 CE →
- 900 CE – 1000 CEEast FranciaMap of 900 CE →
- 1000 CE – 1715 CEHoly Roman EmpireMap of 1000 CE →
- 1715 CE – 1815 CEHabsburg MonarchyMap of 1715 CE →
- 1815 CE – 1878 CEAustrian EmpireMap of 1815 CE →
- 1878 CE – 1914 CEAustria HungaryMap of 1878 CE →
- 1914 CE – 1920 CEAustro-Hungarian EmpireMap of 1914 CE →
- 1920 CE – 1994 CEYugoslaviaMap of 1920 CE →
- 1994 CE – todaySloveniaMap of 1994 CE →
Quick answers
- Who rules Ljubljana today?
- On the latest map, Ljubljana is in Slovenia.
- Who ruled Ljubljana the longest?
- On our maps, the Holy Roman Empire, for about 715 years (1000 CE to 1715 CE).
- How many times has Ljubljana changed hands?
- Our maps show it passing to a new ruler 10 times since 1 CE.
- Who ruled Ljubljana in 1 CE, 1000, 1500 and 1900?
- In 1 CE: Roman Empire. In 1000: Holy Roman Empire. In 1500: Holy Roman Empire. In 1900: Austria Hungary.
Dates are the years of our map snapshots, which are decades or centuries apart, so a change shown between two years happened at some point in that gap. The borders come from the historical-basemaps project and are approximate, especially for the ancient world and for peoples without fixed frontiers.
Ljubljana on this site
- Died in Ljubljana
- Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980)
- Ljubljana in the guided tours
- 1989: The Fall of Communism in Europe
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