Description of the attraction
The Town Hall is an old building that houses the city municipality of Ljubljana. The building is more than five centuries old. The building was originally built in the Gothic style preferred by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In the XVII - XVIII centuries in Ljubljana was in baroque fashion. Famous Italian architects have made efforts to create a unified architectural appearance of the old city. Thanks to them, Ljubljana is considered the Eastern European capital of the Baroque. In 1817-1719, the Town Hall building was rebuilt in accordance with the general style of the city - in the style of the late Italian Baroque. The construction was supervised by Gregor Maczek, but he used the designs of Carlo Martinuzzi, the architect of the famous Bishop's Palace, the Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity and other beautiful Baroque buildings in Ljubljana. A special merit of Machek was the use of the sgraffito style as a decorative finish - laborious, but allowing architectural decorations to remain in their original form for millennia. So the mythological sculptures, the 17th century map of Ljubljana on one of the facades, and other decoration elements have been looking in their original form for the fourth century.
In front of the Town Hall there is another famous Baroque monument - the fountain of the Carniola rivers. This is the last work of the Venetian architect Francesco Robba, who lived and worked in Ljubljana in the 18th century. The trefoil-shaped base is modeled after the old seal of the city. The fountain is surrounded by three allegorical statues depicting the three rivers of Ljubljana - Krka, Sava and Ljubljanica. However, when designing, Robb did not take into account that the river in Italy is a masculine word, and among the Slavs it is feminine. Therefore, the rivers are depicted by male figures. This mistake does not prevent the fountain, reminiscent of the Roman ones, from being a true decoration of the Town Hall Square.
In the courtyards of the Town Hall there is another work of the same architect - the Narcissus Fountain. Later, in the same courtyards, a monument was erected to the famous political figure, the burgomaster of the city Ivan Khribar, an adherent of Slavic ideas.
The Town Hall is open to tourists.
