Ljubljana – a city as a work of art

Jože Plečnik was a realist. He deve­loped his inde­pendent and idio­syn­cratic formal lan­guage while tra­velling and from his per­sistent study of anti­quity, Gott­fried Semper’s “textile theories” and the influence of his teacher Otto Wagner, the most important architect of the Vienna Secession. Plećnik, Wagner’s best student, was the off­spring of a family of car­penters from Ljubljana and had a par­ti­cular influence on three Central European capitals with his extra­or­dinary work. He enn­obled Vienna, Prague and his hometown of Ljubljana with his unmist­akable Plečnik style.

The Zach­erlhaus on Vienna’s farmers’ market (1903–1905) was one of his early works and the pièce de résis­tance of his still youthful crea­tivity. Today, it is con­sidered one of the early buil­dings of modern European archi­tecture. He later designed the Heilig-Geist-Kirche in Vienna-Otta­kring, one of the first churches to be built in steel and con­crete, a material that would also play an important role in his sub­se­quent designs. For the co-founder and first pre­sident of Cze­chos­lo­vakia, Tomás Gar­rigue Masaryk, he saved the ruinous Hra­dčany Castle. Prague Castle was threa­tened by decay before Plečnik gave it new sple­ndour with his clever inter­ven­tions and made it sui­table for the still young demo­cratic republic. The resi­dence of the Golden City and its gardens are world-famous today. At the same time, Plečnik became a pro­fessor at the newly founded Uni­versity of Ljubljana. He taught there until 1956, one year before his death. In 1925, he began to remodel his hometown. His model was Athens, natu­rally more modern, con­tem­porary and with a local flavour. For the renowned art his­torian Friedrich Ach­leitner, Plečnik’s unique style is part of the archi­tecture of the future. And rightly so. After all, it is cha­rac­te­rised by holistic thinking, large-scale and obsessed with detail, sophisti­cated and affordable, modern and con­textual. His “people-centred urban design” has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021.

Plečnik’s main motifs in the redesign of Ljubljana were the central water axis along the Ljubljanica River and the land axis con­necting the Rožnik forest hill with Ljubljana Castle.

The famous Three Bridges (Tro­mos­tovje) are the central point where the two urban axes intersect. Their most important formal ele­ments are lights, columns, beams and balust­rades. They can be found again and again in the city and connect the urban texture not only spa­tially but also con­cep­tually. He also placed par­ti­cular emphasis on the tar­geted inte­gration of nature. He repea­tedly had poplars planted along the Ljubljanica as a refe­rence to the former line of the Roman city wall. This is one of the reasons for the city’s Medi­ter­ranean flair. Ljubljana was named “European Green Capital” in 2016.

Plečnik’s radical yet sen­sitive archi­tec­tural inter­ven­tions have signi­fi­cantly shaped the image of his home city. Ljubljana’s huma­nistic urban planning is the­r­efore one of the most ori­ginal and important holistic works of art of the European 20th century.

In addition to urban addi­tions, Plečnik designed important key buil­dings such as the National Library, the Triglav Insu­rance Admi­nis­tration, the striking Iron House and the Central Market near the Three Bridges. He also moder­nised older buil­dings such as the castle and the former Teu­tonic Knights’ monastery “Križanke”. Plečnik’s archi­tecture is now cate­go­rised as modernist. However, not the clas­sical, but rather a very indi­vidual, alter­native modernism, to which Scan­di­navian archi­tects such as Alvar Alto and Erik Gunnar Asplund also belong.

The power of his work is best expe­ri­enced on a long walk through the Slovenian capital. If you would like to deepen your know­ledge, I recommend taking a look at our archi­tec­tural guide Slovenia, published by DOM publishers, Berlin.

Text: Hendrik Bohle

Photos: Hendrik Bohle, Eugene Kuz­netsov + Jared Lisack / Uns­plash, Dunja Wedam / Ljubljana Tourism

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Author info:

Architect Hendrik Bohle runs a digital magazine on building culture tog­ether with jour­nalist Jan Dimog. On thelink.berlin they have been telling about their dis­co­veries in Europe for years, espe­cially about the con­nec­tions between people and archi­tecture.
When they are not on the road, they curate high-profile exhi­bi­tions, such as the tra­velling exhi­bition on Arne Jacobsen’s archi­tecture.