On December 3rd, for the Slovene national holiday “Ta veseli dan kulture” (This Happy Day of Culture), Villa Zlatica hosted a special tour of the city with a focus on the heritage of our former mayor, Ivan Hribar. The tour starts in front of the mayor’s workplace, the City Hall, and continues through the center all the way to Villa Zlatica in Rožna Dolina.
The Easter earthquake of 1895 caused massive damage to the buildings in the medieval center of the city. Hribar became the mayor the following year after the earthquake and played a significant role in the reconstruction of the city. In the next 14 years of Hribar’s mayoralty, the city underwent massive modernization and visual changes. The guided tour examined the remains of the city from this period.
The period of Hribar’s mayoralty was also marked by turbulent political developments, especially in terms of transforming the German image of the city into an increasingly Slovenian one. This transformation is reflected in the linguistic changes to street names and the erection of new public monuments, such as the Prešeren Monument, which the residents of Ljubljana are very fond of even today.
The former tram system is one of those historical stories deeply ingrained in our collective memory. The guide showed some of its remains that remain visible to a keen eye even today. After arriving at Villa Zlatica, the visitors were shown around Ivan Hribar’s beautiful Art Nouveau home.