Congress Square

File:VodnjakParkZvezda-Ljubljana.JPG

Boris Kobe's "city fountain" on the Congress Square.

Congress Square is one of the central squares in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.

The Square was built in 1821 in the site of the ruins of a medieval Capuchin monastery which had been abolished during the reign of the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. The square was used for ceremonial purposes during the Congress of Ljubljana. After the Congress, a park was planted in the center of the square, which soon acquired the name Park Zvezda (Park Star), due to its shape. The Square was named after the Congress of Ljubljana. During the Socialist period , it was renamed to Liberation Square (Slovenian: Trg osvoboditve), but the local population kept using the old name. In 1990, it regained the original name.

The Square has had a highly symbolic role in modern Slovenian history. On October 29 1918, the independence from Austrian-Hungarian rule and the establishment of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was proclamed during a mass demonstration on the square. In May 1945, the Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito first visited Slovenia after World War Two and held a speech on the balcony of the University of Ljubljana, which stands on the square. On June 22 1988, the first free mass demonstration was held on the square demanding the release of four Slovene journalist imprisoned by the Yugoslav army. The demonstration marked the beginning of the Slovenian spring which culminated in the declaration of independence of Slovenia on June 25 1991. The independence was first demanded in the so-called May Declaration, written by the Slovenian democratic opposition and signed by numerous civil society movements; the declaration was first publicly read by the poet Tone Pavček in a demonstration on the Congress Square on May 8, 1989. In 1999 Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit Slovenia. On June 21, he publicly adressed the crowd gathered on the Congress Square, quoting the first verses of the Slovenian national anthem.

Buildings and monuments

Several important buildings face the square. Among them, there is the early Baroque Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity, the Kazina Palace, one of the few Neoclassical buildings remaining in Ljubljana after the earthquake of 1895, the palace of the Slovenian Philharmonic and the rectorate of the University of Ljubljana, formerly the seat of the Provincial Diet of the Duchy of Carniola. The prestigious publishing house Slovenska matica also has its seat on the Square.

During the Austro-Hungarian period, a monument to the Austrian general Joseph Radetzky, who was married to a Carniolan noblewoman and lived in Ljubljana in the last years of his life, stood in the park on the Square. The monument was removed in 1919 and placed in the National Museum.

In the late 1930s, the square was renovated by the famous Slovene architect Jože Plečnik. New trees on the park were planted, most of which still grow. In 1940, an equestrian statue of the king Alexander I of Yugoslavia, made by the architect Lojze Dolinar, was erected in the middle of the square. In 1941, the statue was removed by the Fascist Italian occupation forces. In 1954, after the formal annexation of the Zone B of the Free Territory of Trieste to Yugoslavia, an anchor of the Italian ocean liner SS Rex sunk near Koper during World War II was placed in the park to symbolize the victory over Italian expansionism and the reunion of the Slovenian Littoral with the rest of Slovenia.

Several other monuments also stand on the square: Jože Plečnik's memorial to the women who protested against the political imprisoments of Slovene patriots during the Italian occupation of the Province of Ljubljana, a fountain with potable water designed by the architect Boris Kobe, a replica of a golden Roman monument found among the ruins of Emona. A Biedermeier music gazebo from the 1830s also stands in the park.

In December 2004 the artist Matej Andraž Vogrinčič set up an "Enchanted Forrest" in the Zvezda Park consisting of 1,000 potted fir trees. The trees were later donated to the Slovene Forestry Institute, which used them to forest affected areas in the north-west of the country

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  The anchor of the ocean liner SS Rex
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  Kazina
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  The main building of the University of Ljubljana, formerly the Carniolan State Mansion
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  The Music gazebo
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  Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity
• Slovenian Philharmonic
  Slovenian Philharmonic