Ptuj
Ptuj is a town in northeastern Slovenia, the seat of the Municipality of Ptuj. Ptuj, the oldest recorded city in Slovenia, has been inhabited since the late Stone Age and developed from a Roman military fort. Ptuj was located at a strategically important crossing of the Drava River, along a prehistoric trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Adriatic. Traditionally the area was part of the Styria region and became part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. In the early 20th century the majority of the residents were ethnic Germans, but today the population is Slovene. Residents of Ptuj are known as Ptujčani in Slovene. Ptuj is the oldest recorded town in Slovenia. There is evidence. In the Late Iron Age it was settled by Celts. By the 1st century BC, the settlement was controlled by Ancient Rome as part of the Pannonian province. In 69 AD, Vespasian was elected Roman Emperor by the Danubian legions in Ptuj, the first written mention of the city of Ptuj is from the same year. Poetovium was the base-camp of Legio XIII Gemina.
The name originated in the times of Emperor Trajan, who granted the settlement city status and named it Colonia Ulpia Traiana Poetovio in 103. The patristic writer Victorinus was Bishop of Poetovio before martyrdom in 303 or 304; the Caesar Constantinus Gallus was divested of his imperial robe and arrested in Poetovio before his subsequent execution in Pola The battle of Poetovio in 388 saw Theodosius I's victory over the usurper, Maximus. The city had 40,000 inhabitants until it was plundered by the Huns in 450. In 570 the city was occupied by Slavic tribes. Ptuj became part of the Frankish Empire after the fall of Avar state at the end of 8th century. Between 840 and 874 it belonged to the Slavic Balaton Principality of Kocelj. Between 874 and 890 Ptuj came under the influence of the Archbishopric of Salzburg; as Pettau, it was incorporated into the Duchy of Styria in 1555. Pettau was a battleground during the Ottoman wars in Europe and suffered from fires in 1684, 1705, 1710, 1744, its population and importance began to decline in the 19th century, after the completion of the Vienna-Trieste route of the Austrian Southern Railway, as the line went through Marburg instead.
According to the 1910 Austro-Hungarian census, 86% of the population of Pettau's Old Town was German-speaking, while the population of the surrounding villages predominantly spoke Slovenian. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, Pettau was included in the short-lived Republic of German Austria, but after the military intervention of the Slovenian general Rudolf Maister, the entire territory of Lower Styria was included into the State of Slovenes and Serbs. During the interwar period, the number and the percentage of those identifying as Germans in the city, renamed Ptuj, decreased although a strong ethnic German minority remained. After the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Ptuj was occupied by Nazi Germany. From 1941 to 1944 the town's Slovenian population deported, their homes were taken over by German speakers from South Tyrol and Gottschee County, who had themselves been evicted according to an agreement between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. These German immigrants, along with the native German Pettauer, were expelled to Austria in 1945.
Since 1945, Ptuj has been populated completely by Slovenes. Ptuj Castle St. George's Church Little Castle Ptuj Town Hall Ptuj Town Theatre Town Tower Dominican monastery Orpheus Monument Franciscan monastery Upper Mansion St. Oswald's ChurchThe parish church in the settlement is dedicated to Saint George and belongs to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Maribor, it is a three-naved Gothic building from the 13th and early 14th century, but the structure incorporates parts of a much earlier structure, dating to the mid-9th century. Ptuj is the center place of a ten-day-long carnival in the spring, an ancient Slavic pagan rite of spring and fertility, called Kurentovanje or Korantovanje. Kurent is believed to be the name of an ancient god of hedonism - the Slavic counterpart of the Greek god Priapos, although there are no written records. Kurenti or Koranti are figures dressed in sheep skin who go about the town wearing masks, a long red tongue, cow bells, multi-colored ribbons on the head; the Kurenti from Ptuj and the adjoining villages wear feathers, while those from the Haloze and Lancova Vas wear horns.
Organized in groups, Kurents go through town, from house to house, making noise with their bells and wooden sticks, to symbolically scare off evil spirits and the winter. The nearest airports are Ptuj Sport Airfield, seven kilometers away, Maribor Edvard Rusjan Airport, eighteen kilometers away. Victorinus of Pettau, martyr Luigi Kasimir, artist Angela Salloker, actress Brigita Brezovac, bodybuilder Nastja Čeh, Slovene footballer, played in the UEFA Champions League with Club Brugge Laris Gaiser, geopolitical analyst and expert of international relations Benka Pulko, Slovene long distance motorcycle traveler, photographer and Guinness World Record Holder Miha Remec, science fiction author Aleš Šteger, Slovene poet Dejan Zavec, Slovene boxer Ptuj is twinned with: Official website Ptuj Tourism
Koper
Koper is the fifth largest city in Slovenia. Located in the southwestern part of the country five kilometres south of the border with Italy and 20 kilometers from Trieste, Koper is the largest coastal city in the country, it is bordered by the satellite towns of Izola and Ankaran, anchors the Istrian region. With a unique ecology and biodiversity, it is considered an important national natural resource, it is the oldest recorded urban settlement in Slovenia. The city's Port of Koper is the major contributor to the economy of the eponymous city municipality. With only one percent of Slovenia having a coastline, the influence that the Port of Koper has on tourism was a factor in Ankaran deciding to leave the municipality in a referendum in 2011 to establish its own; the city is a destination on a number of Mediterranean cruising lines. In 2016, the city expects 65 cruise ship arrivals with the season spanning from March to December. Koper is the main urban centre of the Slovenian Istria, with a population of about 25,000.
The city of Koper is bilingual, with both Slovene and Italian as official languages. Sights in Koper include the 15th-century Praetorian Palace and Loggia in Venetian Gothic style, the 12th-century Carmine Rotunda church, St. Nazarius' Cathedral, with its 14th-century tower. Koper is one of the main road entry points into Slovenia from Italy, which lies to the north of the municipality; the main motorway crossing is at Spodnje Škofije to the north of the city of Koper. The motorway continues into Trieste. Koper has a rail connection with the capital city, Ljubljana. On the coast, there is a crossing at Lazaret into Lazaretto in Muggia municipality in Trieste province; the Italian border crossing is known as San Bartolomeo. The Italian name of the city was anciently spelled as Capo d'Istria, as such reported on maps and sources in other European languages. Modern names of the city include: Croatian: Kopar, Serbian: Копар, German: Gafers. Koper developed from an ancient settlement built on an island in the southeastern part of the Gulf of Koper in the northern Adriatic.
In Ancient Greek, the town was known as Aegida. It became known by the Latin names of Capris, Capre, or Caprista, from which the modern Slovenian name stems. In 568, Roman citizens of nearby Tergeste fled to Capris due to an invasion of the Lombards. In honour of the Byzantine emperor Justinian II, the town was renamed Justinopolis. Justinopolis was under both Lombard and Frankish rule and was occupied by Avars in the 8th century. Since the 8th century even since the 6th century, Koper was the seat of a diocese. One of Koper's bishops was the Lutheran reformer Pier Paolo Vergerio. In 1828, it was merged into the diocese of Trieste. Trade between Koper and Venice has been recorded since 932. In the war between Venice and the Holy Roman Empire, Koper was on the German side, as a result was awarded with town rights, granted in 1035 by Emperor Conrad II. After 1232, Koper was under the Patriarch of Aquileia, in 1278 it joined the Republic of Venice, it was at this time that the city walls and towers were demolished.
In 1420, the Patriarch of Aquileia ceded his remaining possessions in Istria to the Republic, consolidating Venetian power in Koper. Koper grew to become the capital of Venetian Istria and was renamed Caput Histriae'head of Istria'; the 16th century saw the population of Koper fall drastically, from its high of between 10,000 and 12,000 inhabitants, due to repeated plague epidemics. When Trieste became a free port in 1719, Koper lost its monopoly on trade, its importance diminished further. According to the 1900 census, 7,205 Italian, 391 Slovenian, 167 Croatian, 67 German inhabitants lived in Koper. Assigned to Italy after World War I, at the end of World War II it was part of the Zone B of the Free Territory of Trieste, controlled by Yugoslavia. Most of the Italian inhabitants left the city by 1954, when the Free Territory of Trieste formally ceased to exist and Zone B became part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1977, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Koper was separated from the Diocese of Trieste.
With Slovenian independence in 1991, Koper became the only commercial port in Slovenia. The University of Primorska is based in the city. Koper's 15th-century Praetorian Palace is located on the city square, it was built from two older 13th-century houses that were connected by a loggia, rebuilt many times, finished as a Venetian Gothic palace. Today, it is home to the city of Koper’s tourist office; the city's Cathedral of the Assumption was built in the second half of the 12th century and has one of the oldest bells in Slovenia, cast by Master Jakob in Venice. The upper terrace offers a great view of the Bay of Trieste. In the middle of it hangs the Sacra Conversatione painting from 1516, one of the best Renaissance paintings in Slovenia, made by Vittore Carpaccio. Koper has a humid subtropical climate. There is a great deal of rainfall in Koper in the driest month; this climate is considered to be Cfa according to the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. The average temperature in Koper is 14.4 °C.
The average annual rainfall is 1,056 millimetres. The municipality has 47,539 inhabitants. Of these, 23,385 are male and 24,154 are female. Italian was once the main language in the town, spoken by 92% of the population in 1900, but this number decreased after Slovenian I
EuroBasket 2015
EuroBasket 2015 was the 39th annual edition of the EuroBasket championship, organised by FIBA Europe. It took place in four different countries, making it the first EuroBasket held in more than one country, it ended on 20 September. The top two teams qualified to the 2016 Summer Olympics; the next five teams advanced to the World Olympic Qualifying Tournaments. Latvia and Croatia qualified due to Serbia and Italy hosting two of the Olympic qualifying tournaments while Turkey qualified as an invitee. Spain won their third title by defeating Lithuania 80–63 in the final. France won bronze on home soil defeating Serbia; the final game was held in the Stade Pierre-Mauroy and set a new record for the highest attendance in a EuroBasket game, with 26,922. Pau Gasol was named the tournament's MVP. On 18 December 2011, FIBA Europe decided to let Ukraine host EuroBasket 2015, after France, Croatia and Italy withdrew their joint bid. On 19 March 2014, tournament director Markiyan Lubkivsky announced that EuroBasket 2015 would not take place in Ukraine because of the political and financial crisis and the championship would be relocated.
But FIBA Europe was forced to deny reports that Ukraine had given up the hosting rights for EuroBasket 2015 due to the continuous political situation and security issues in Ukraine. On 13 June 2014, FIBA Europe announced that Ukraine would not be hosting the championships. Sixteen countries expressed an initial interest to bid for the relocated event. National Federations were called by FIBA Europe to bid for hosting the tournament or parts of the tournament until 31 July 2014; the next day FIBA Europe announced eight official bids from potential organizers: All interested federations were provided the option to bid to stage either one of the four groups in the Group Phase of the tournament, one of the groups and the Final Phase, only the finals, or the entire tournament. FIBA Europe was scheduled to announce the details of the bids after 27 August 2014. Croatia, France and Turkey bid to host one of the four groups in the Group Phase and the Final Phase in the knock-out round. Additionally, Turkey bid to host the Final Phase only.
All other countries bid to host only one of the four groups in the Group Phase. Prior to the Board Meeting, Turkey withdrew their candidature from hosting any part of the tournament while Poland and Croatia withdrew their candidature to host the Final Phase of the tournament, leaving France as the only candidate to host the Final Phase. On 8 September 2014, it was announced that the FIBA EuroBasket 2015 tournament would be hosted in Germany, Croatia and France, with each of the countries hosting one respective group during the group stage of the tournament. France would be the hosts of the finals in the knock-out phase in the city of Lille at the multi-functional Stade Pierre-Mauroy, which has a 27,000 capacity for basketball. Qualification for the tournament took place in two phases; the remaining teams went into qualification with the remaining FIBA Europe sides. FIBA Europe released the seedings for the EuroBasket 2015 draw on 27 November 2014. According to the FIBA Europe regulations the participating nations, the 10 participants of the 2014 World Cup would be seeded first, based on their respective records in FIBA EuroBasket 2013, with the remaining teams seeded based on their qualification records.
The draw took place on 8 December 2014 at 16:00 at Disneyland in France. Criteria for the draw was as follows: The four hosts were drawn together, but as Latvia were amongst the third seeded teams and Germany the fifth, only three teams would be in fourth and sixth pot containing the remaining seeds and these teams could not be drawn into groups with Latvia and Germany respectively. France and Croatia, as hosts, were drawn first and the two remaining first seeds and Lithuania, were drawn separately into the remaining two groups not with a top-seeded team. In addition to this, following on from the exceptional circumstances leading to the relocation of EuroBasket 2015, each of the four hosts was granted the right to select a partner federation for commercial and marketing criteria; these teams would automatically be placed into the same group as their chosen partner country. The selections were. Venue: Montpellier, France Venue: Berlin, Germany Venue: Zagreb, Croatia Venue: Riga, Latvia Venue: Lille, France Olympic qualifying bracketThe winners of the 5–8th place semifinals advanced to the qualification tournament.
The 5–8th place semifinals losers played in the seventh place game to determine the last participant. Official final ranking by FIBA Europe. PG – Sergio Rodríguez SG – Nando de Colo SF – Jonas Maciulis PF – Pau Gasol C – Jonas Valanciunas
Novo Mesto
Novo Mesto is the city on a bend of the Krka River in the City Municipality of Novo Mesto in southeastern Slovenia, close to the border with Croatia. The town is traditionally considered the economic and cultural centre of the historical Lower Carniola region. Novo Mesto was attested in historical sources in 1365 as Růdolfswerde; the German name is a compound of the personal name Rudolf and wert'island, land above the water', refers to Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, who conferred town rights upon the settlement in 1365. The parallel German name Neustadtl was in use; the name used for the settlement before 1365 is unknown. The Slovene name Novo mesto means'new town'. From 1865 to 1918, the town was named Rudolfovo in Slovene, based on the German name. Following World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the city became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and was renamed Novo mesto. Novo Mesto has been settled since pre-history; the city is one of the most important archeological sites of the Hallstatt culture in Europe and has been nicknamed the "City of Situlas" after numerous situlas found in the area.
Graben Castle down the Krka River, ancestral seat of the noble House of Graben von Stein, was first mentioned in an 1170 deed. The town itself was founded by the Habsburg archduke Rudolf IV of Austria on 7 April 1365 as Rudolfswerth; the Austrian Habsburgs received the Carniolan March from the hands of Emperor Louis IV in 1335 and in 1364 Rudolf "the Founder" proclaimed himself a Duke of Carniola. During World War II the city was controlled by Fascist Italy as part of the Province of Ljubljana until Mussolini's downfall in 1943, it was occupied by Nazi Germany until the end of the war. In 1958, the authorities of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had a motorway built connecting the Slovenian capital Ljubljana and Zagreb in Croatia, which passed through Novo Mesto; the A2 motorway is today part of the European route E70. With its construction, Novo Mesto became much better connected to the rest of Slovenia and the rest of Yugoslavia, began to grow as an important regional center; the population of Novo Mesto is predominantly ethnically Slovene.
On the southeast outskirts of the town there is a Roma settlement called Žabjak known as Brezje. Novo Mesto features a humid continental climate. Winters are moderately cold with snow cover every winter; the highest snow depth was recorded on 17 February 1969 with 103 cm. The coldest temperature of -25.6 ºC was recorded on 17 February 1952 while highest, 39.9 ºC on 8 August 2013. Precipitation is high with most rain in early summer and early autumn; the driest month is January with 53 mm. The wettest year on record was 2014 with 1482 mm of precipitation while the driest was 2000 with 827 mm. Novo Mesto has been a hub of artistic creation in various fields: music and visual arts; the turning point is the September 1920 exhibition named Novo Mesto Spring, which brought together artists of different genres and marks the beginning of avant-garde art in Slovenia. The development of music in Novo Mesto may be traced to the 16th century, with the clergy, e.g. the provost Jurij Slatkonja, the first residential Bishop of Vienna, promulgating the development of vocal music.
Accelerated development took place in the 19th century with the establishment of a brass band in 1846, the establishment of the Lower Carniola Singing Society in 1884. The society laid the foundations of the vocal music in the wider Lower Carniola area. A significant part in the musical development of the town was contributed by students and the teaching staff of the Novo Mesto Grammar School; the school had a quality singing choir led by Hugolin Sattner, Aleš Ottokar and Ignacij Hladnik as well as a student orchestra led by Viktor Parma. In 1886, a male choir was established in the town in the frame of the Catholic Craftsman Assistants Society. Several classical composers were connected to Novo Mesto, the best known of them being Marjan Kozina, after whom the music school of the town is named, the expressionist composer Marij Kogoj. In the 20th century after World War II, a number of influential contemporary music groups appeared and created in the town, the most notable of them being Rudolfovo, Dan D and others.
In the early 21st century, the most popular pop-rock music group was Dan D, whereas classical music gained two important pieces of work in the frame of the Jurij Slatkonja Vocal Academy, a chamber opera and Te Deum, a monumental cantata work. The central literature personalities of Novo Mesto are the writer Janez Trdina, the poet Dragotin Kette, the poet and essayist Anton Podbevšek. Trdina, after whom the central cultural venue of the town is named Janez Trdina Cultural Centre, lived in Novo Mesto in exile and wrote short fictional stories about the Gorjanci hill range, which he published under the title Fairytales and Stories about Gorjanci. Kette, who lived in Novo Mesto in the time of his studies, wrote lyrical poetry dedicated to Angela Smola whom he met in the town's chapter church. Podbevšek laid the foundations of Slovene lyrical avant-garde poetry; the youngest professional theatre in Slovenia and the first theatre in the town, established in 2005, has been named after him Anton
Germany
Germany the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north and the Czech Republic to the east and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to the west. Germany includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,386 square kilometres, has a temperate seasonal climate. With 83 million inhabitants, it is the second most populous state of Europe after Russia, the most populous state lying in Europe, as well as the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is a decentralized country, its capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while Frankfurt serves as its financial capital and has the country's busiest airport. Germany's largest urban area is the Ruhr, with its main centres of Essen; the country's other major cities are Hamburg, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Bremen and Nuremberg. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity.
A region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. After the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation was formed in 1815; the German revolutions of 1848–49 resulted in the Frankfurt Parliament establishing major democratic rights. In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic; the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American and French occupation zones, East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone.
Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990. Today, the sovereign state of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic led by a chancellor, it is a great power with a strong economy. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods; as a developed country with a high standard of living, it upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection, a tuition-free university education. The Federal Republic of Germany was a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the European Union in 1993, it is part of the Schengen Area and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the G20, the OECD. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential and successful artists, musicians, film people, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
Germany has a large number of World Heritage sites and is among the top tourism destinations in the world. The English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine; the German term Deutschland diutisciu land is derived from deutsch, descended from Old High German diutisc "popular" used to distinguish the language of the common people from Latin and its Romance descendants. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz "popular", derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- "people", from which the word Teutons originates; the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a coal mine in Schöningen between 1994 and 1998 where eight 380,000-year-old wooden javelins of 1.82 to 2.25 m length were unearthed. The Neander Valley was the location where the first non-modern human fossil was discovered.
The Neanderthal 1 fossils are known to be 40,000 years old. Evidence of modern humans dated, has been found in caves in the Swabian Jura near Ulm; the finds included 42,000-year-old bird bone and mammoth ivory flutes which are the oldest musical instruments found, the 40,000-year-old Ice Age Lion Man, the oldest uncontested figurative art discovered, the 35,000-year-old Venus of Hohle Fels, the oldest uncontested human figurative art discovered. The Nebra sky disk is a bronze artefact created during the European Bronze Age attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt, it is part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme. The Germanic tribes are thought to date from the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From southern Scandinavia and north Germany, they expanded south and west from the 1st century BC, coming into contact with the Celtic tribes of Gaul as well
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic known by its short-form name, Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with a temperate continental climate and oceanic climate, it is a unitary parliamentary republic, with 10.6 million inhabitants. Other major cities are Brno, Ostrava and Pilsen; the Czech Republic is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the United Nations, the OSCE, the Council of Europe. It is a developed country with an advanced, high income export-oriented social market economy based in services and innovation; the UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development. The Czech Republic is a welfare state with a "continental" European social model, a universal health care system, tuition-free university education and is ranked 14th in the Human Capital Index, it ranks as the 6th safest or most peaceful country and is one of the most non-religious countries in the world, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance.
The Czech Republic includes the historical territories of Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire. After the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire along with the Kingdom of Germany, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, numerous other territories, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Beside Bohemia itself, the King of Bohemia ruled the lands of the Bohemian Crown, holding a vote in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor. In the Hussite Wars of the 15th century driven by the Protestant Bohemian Reformation, the kingdom faced economic embargoes and defeated five consecutive crusades proclaimed by the leaders of the Catholic Church. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary.
The Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years' War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, eradicated Protestantism and reimposed Catholicism, adopted a policy of gradual Germanization; this contributed to the anti-Habsburg sentiment. A long history of resentment of the Catholic Church followed and still continues. With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the Bohemian Kingdom became part of the German Confederation 1815-1866 as part of Austrian Empire and the Czech language experienced a revival as a consequence of widespread romantic nationalism. In the 19th century, the Czech lands became the industrial powerhouse of the monarchy and were subsequently the core of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, formed in 1918 following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. Czechoslovakia remained the only democracy in this part of Europe in the interwar period. However, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, while the Slovak region became the Slovak Republic.
Most of the three millions of the German-speaking minority were expelled following the war. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections and after the 1948 coup d'état, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence. In 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed and market economy was reintroduced. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia; the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004. The traditional English name "Bohemia" derives from Latin "Boiohaemum", which means "home of the Boii"; the current English name comes from the Polish ethnonym associated with the area, which comes from the Czech word Čech. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, who brought them to Bohemia, to settle on Říp Mountain.
The etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning "member of the people. The country has been traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the east, Czech Silesia in the northeast. Known as the lands of the Bohemian Crown since the 14th century, a number of other names for the country have been used, including Czech/Bohemian lands, Bohemian Crown and the lands of the Crown of Saint Wenceslas; when the country regained its independence after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918, the new name of Czechoslovakia was coined to reflect the union of the Czech and Slovak nations within the one country. After Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1992, the Czech part lac
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It has been the cultural, economic and administrative centre of independent Slovenia since 1991. During antiquity, a Roman city called. Ljubljana itself was first mentioned in the first half of the 12th century. Situated at the middle of a trade route between the northern Adriatic Sea and the Danube region, it was the historical capital of Carniola, one of the Slovene-inhabited parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, it was under Habsburg rule from the Middle Ages until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. After World War II, Ljubljana became the capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it retained this status until Slovenia became independent in 1991 and Ljubljana became the capital of the newly formed state. The origin of name of the city, Ljubljana, is unclear. In the Middle Ages, both the river and the town were known by the German name Laibach; this name was in official use as an endonym until 1918, it remains frequent as a German exonym, both in common speech and official use.
The city is alternatively named Lublana in many English language documents. The city is called Lublana in Silesian, Lubiana in Latin: Labacum and anciently Aemona. For most scholars, the problem has been in how to connect the German names; the origin from the Slavic ljub- "to love, like" was in 2007 supported as the most probable by the linguist Tijmen Pronk, a specialist in comparative Indo-European linguistics and Slovene dialectology, from the University of Leiden. He supported the thesis; the linguist Silvo Torkar, who specialises in Slovene personal and place names, argued at the same place for the thesis that the name Ljubljana derives from Ljubija, the original name of the Ljubljanica River flowing through it, itself derived from the Old Slavic male name Ljubovid, "the one of a lovely appearance". The name Laibach, he claimed, was a hybrid of German and Slovene and derived from the same personal name; the symbol of the city is the Ljubljana Dragon. It is depicted on the top of the tower of Ljubljana Castle in the Ljubljana coat of arms and on the Ljubljanica-crossing Dragon Bridge.
It symbolises power and greatness. There are several explanations on the origin of the Ljubljana Dragon. According to a Slavic myth, the slaying of a dragon releases the waters and ensures the fertility of the earth, it is thought that the myth is tied to the Ljubljana Marshes, the expansive marshy area that periodically threatens Ljubljana with flooding. According to the celebrated Greek legend, the Argonauts on their return home after having taken the Golden Fleece found a large lake surrounded by a marsh between the present-day towns of Vrhnika and Ljubljana, it was there. This monster has evolved into the dragon, it is more believable that the dragon was adopted from Saint George, the patron of the Ljubljana Castle chapel built in the 15th century. In the legend of Saint George, the dragon represents the old ancestral paganism overcome by Christianity. According to another explanation, related to the second, the dragon was at first only a decoration above the city coat of arms. In the Baroque, it became part of the coat of arms, in the 19th and the 20th century, it outstripped the tower and other elements in importance.
Around 2000 BC, the Ljubljana Marshes in the immediate vicinity of Ljubljana were settled by people living in pile dwellings. Prehistoric pile dwellings and the oldest wooden wheel in the world are among the most notable archeological findings from the marshland; these lake-dwelling people lived through hunting and primitive agriculture. To get around the marshes, they used dugout canoes made by cutting out the inside of tree trunks, their archaeological remains, nowadays in the Municipality of Ig, have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site since June 2011, in the common nomination of six Alpine states. The area remained a transit point for numerous tribes and peoples, among them the Illyrians, followed by a mixed nation of the Celts and the Illyrians called the Iapydes, in the 3rd century BC a Celtic tribe, the Taurisci. Around 50 BC, the Romans built a military encampment that became a permanent settlement called Iulia Aemona; this entrenched fort was occupied by the Legio XV Apollinaris.
In 452, it was destroyed by the Huns under Attila's orders, by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards. Emona housed 5,000 -- 6,000 played an important role during numerous battles, its plastered brick houses, painted in different colours, were connected to a drainage system. In the 6th century, the ancestors of the Slovenes moved in. In the 9th century, they fell while experiencing frequent Magyar raids. Not much is known about the area during the settlement of Slavs in the period between the downfall of Emona and the Early Middle Ages; the parchment sheet Nomina defunctorum, most written in the second half of 1161, mentions the nobleman Rudolf of Tarcento, a lawyer of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, who had bestowed a canon with 20 farmsteads beside the castle of Ljubljana to the Patriarchate. According to the historian Peter Štih's deduction, this happened between 1112 and 1125, thus representing the earliest mention of Ljubljana. Owned by a number of possessors, until the first half of the 12th century, the territory south of the Sava where the town of
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