Vrhnika

Description:

Vrhnika is a city and a municipality in Slovenia. It is situated on the Ljubljanica River, 21 km from Ljubljana along the A1 motorway.

History

In Roman times, the settlement on the location of today's Vrhnika was known as Nauportus when it was considered as important communication point.Vrhnika as exists today started to develop in the High Middle Ages. The first written reference was by German name Ober Laibach or Ober Laybach (literally "Upper Ljubljana") in the year 1300. Vrhnika became a market town and was considered to be among the wealthiest towns in Carniola, up to the early 18th century, when it started to lose importance. Nevertheless, it remained one of main transportation junctions in Inner Austria, because of its strategic location on the croassroads between the Trieste-Vienna and Rijeka-Klagenfurt trade routes.The development of the town was however strongly impaired by the construction of the Austrian Southern Railway in the 1840s, which bypassed it. From then on, it started losing importance, becoming a satellite town of Ljubljana, which has remained up to this day.

Vrhnika is the birthplace of one of the most important Slovene writers, Ivan Cankar (1876 - 1918). The house where he was born is now a museum.
Cankar's Memorial House, at 1 Na Klancu, is a valuable cultural monument at the heart of Vrhnika town centre. It is situated on the site where a wooden cottage with a thatched roof once stood, the one in which writer Ivan Cankar was born.
Today the Memorial House runs guided tours of the museum collection displaying the living conditions of a lower-class family at the turn of the 18th century.The shelves and showcases display Cankar's original prints, photographs of himself, his relatives, friends and benefactors from the times he worked in Ljubljana and Vienna, and his self-portraits and drawings.
Visitors can buy postcards, brochures and other memorabilia of Cankar's life.

 
The Memorial House is open:
APRIL 1 – OCTOBER 31:
TUE. – FR.:
9:00–13:00,
SAT., SUN., BANK HOLIDAYS:
14:00 – 18:00.