A few hours in a stylish city.

On our visit to Slovenia, we spent a few hours in Ljubljana before taking the late evening flight home to UK.
I'd imagined a typical East European city, pleasant in places, beautiful in some, but pretty soon viewed, pretty soon left. ButI was surprised. Ljubljana is colourful, graceful, sophisticated even. It has its drabness, its poverty, its share of poor planning, but it also has an elegance, a vigour, and a loveliness ( at least to me) that equals, even surpasses, many other celebrated cities of Europe. Our few hours there were not enough; we shall be back. We'll go back to explore, to enjoy, to snap, to eat. ( And, G+L, if you're listening, to look in shoe shops!! )

In 1895, Ljubljana suffered a massive earthquake. The mayor of the time, Ivan Hribar, set up a rebuilding project. His architects were Slavic ones; they included Josip Vancas, Cyril Metod Koch and Maks Fabiani. Fabiani, in particular, then introduced the Austrian Secessionist ( Art Nouveau ) style of architecture to Ljubljana, following the influence of fashionable Vienna. Here are some snaps of some of these fabulous buildings and others....