My city’s old part is one of my dearest places to take a walk. It’s full of dramatically decorated buildings, just like the September sky today.
These arcades right above the water are hosting a covered market with fish, delicatessens and cafés. While the arcades give an impression of being really old, they were actually built in 1940-44, but the design was meant to honour the city’s Roman predecessor Emona.
The arcades were designed by our most renowned architect Joze Plecnik and they were built to solve one of the key problems that the sellers were facing at the time - they struggled to keep their products dry and clean in case of rain or snow, not to mention that they also had less customers who didn’t want to get soaked while doing their shopping.
Plecnik was extremely important for the city’s present look as he designed some of the most significant buildings like the National and University Library, the main market, the main cemetery, many bridges, and the summer theatre called Križanke which is my favourite concert venue. To create this theatre, he was tasked with turning an old monastery into an open air concert hall. You can read more on his work here
The construction of the arcades took much longer than expected because of the supply shortage during the World War II. In those years, the whole city was surrounded by wire.
Interesting fact: although it’s located right in the centre of the country, Ljubljana became a city on the border overnight when Germany and Italy occupied the country and split it in half in 1941.
On this last photo you can see the markets on the left, so this is the backside, and this empty square usually hosts the open market in the mornings while the building behind serves as the butcher section.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little something about architecture of Ljubljana. I surely enjoyed taking the photos with #monomad photo challenge by @monochromes in mind. 🙂