Ljubljana is a funny city.
It is one of those instantly recognisable Austro-Hungarian towns that can be found all over Central Europe, from Lviv to Linz, from Brasov to Plzen. Cozy, nice, clean, clear, ordered, disciplined, boring, shallowly happy.
But Ljubljana has a different feel – something southern is in the air, something Adriatic.
Ljubljana can be seen as one of the southernmost ordnung-und-disziplin cities, and as the northernmost (and innermost) Mediterranean city,
And that’s because of a group of 23 men that called themselves – bees.
The end of the 17th century was an era of huge relief. The most devastating war of all wars – the Thirty Years’ War – ended, the turbaned Turks were driven away, and it was time to do business and to enjoy the fruits of labour.
But the political – and especially spiritual! – landscape had radically re-formed. Slovenia – Duchy of Carniola – used to be a rather backward land at the extreme south of the Holy Roman Empire that was oriented to the north. The seas of the Empire were the North Sea and the Baltic, the route to the Mediterranean was blocked by the Venetians and the Ottomans.
The ideas – the fashion, the styles – used to enter Slovenia from the north. Like the Reformation, and the Northern Renaissance, the Dutch and north German art and architectural styles.
Now the Peace of Westphalia and the glorious victory of the winged hussars at Vienna changed the orientation of the Austrian part of the Holy Roman Empire: it was staunchly Catholic as opposed to the Protestant north. This intra-Empire divide was strong, and after centuries of northern influences the gates opened to the southwest.
To Italy.
Ljubljana suddenly found itself not at the backward edge of the Empire, but at the front of the renewed trade route to the Mediterranean. No longer the forlorn last, it became the first to receive and adopt new ideas.
As the city grew and grew richer, the rich started to send their progeny to study not in Graz or Vienna anymore, but to Venice, to Padova and Bologna. And those kids brought all kinds of new stuff to Ljubljana
Like the Baroque.
In 1693 a group of rich new bourgeois, city patricians, high church officials, lawyers and doctors of medicine formed a club that was modelled after the Roman Academia delli Arcadi: Academia Operosorum Labacensium.
They grabbed Ljubljana by the scruff of its neck and dragged it into modernity.
The Operoses – apes Academiae, the bees of the Academy – were behind an unprecedented explosion of cultural renewal of Ljubljana. The first collegium of medicine. The first public library. The first philharmonic society – Academia Philharmonicorum. The start of the Philosophical and the Theological university.
And they initiated the incredible building spree in Ljubljana that changed the very soul of the city. They brought architects and artists from Italy and like mushrooms after the rain new, immense, and completely different churches and secular buildings started to grow all around.
Vidisses ea tempestate in urbe Labacensi Romam redivivam et triumphantem – to see in Ljubljana a revived and triumphant Rome – wrote the exalted Operose Janez Gregor Dolničar.
The Ljubljana Cathedral of St. Nicholas is a prime result of all this buzzing.
Academia Operosorum held a tender for the new Cathedral church. The initial plans were done by the Capuchin friar Florentianus Ponnensis, and were completed by the renowned architect and painter Andrea Pozzo. The works started in 1701 and the Cathedral – without the dome – was consecrated in 1706.
The interior of the Cathedral was also made to impress. The frescoes by Giulio Quaglio, the angels by Gropelli, the altar by Francesco Robba, statues by Putti …
The Seminary – Collegium Carolinum nobillium Labacensis – was designed by Carlo Martinuzzi and built right beside the Cathedral between 1708 and 1772. The first public library of Ljubljana (it still operates!) opened here in 1725 in a great hall with frescoes by Quaglio and cabinets by Jožef Vernik.
The monumental portal to the Seminary – work of local master Luka Mislej – bears the words: VIRTUTI & MVSIS. Virtues and muses.
An apt motto for the Baroque Ljubljana.
And thus it started. The Ursuline church of the Holy Trinity, the new facade of the Franciscan church and the monastery, the new City hall, the fountain of Francesco Robba, the church of the Teutonic Order, the Gruber mansion … In a couple of decades Ljubljana was thoroughly rebuilt, redone, revived.
Academia Operosorum Labacensium soon disbanded, but it didn’t matter anymore: the new era was here to stay, and Ljubljana became a completely new, proud city. It forever claimed the most prominent place of all Slovenian towns, growing and evolving ever since, and in the end deservedly becoming the capital of Slovenia.
The Baroque character of Ljubljana persisted well into the late 19th century, and only the great earthquake of 1895 opened the way for another renewal, this time in the Vienna secession style. The post-war expansion – and some crimes against architecture that continue to be perpetrated – changed the city yet again.
But the Mediterranean breeze that invigorated Ljubljana at the beginning of the 18th century is still messing the hair of the people of Ljubljana.
The bees did their job well.
Kite aerial photos shot with Nikon P330 on The Original Blue rokkaku by dr.Agon kites.