HISTORY OF LJUBLJANA In the first half of the 19th century, Ljubljana's appearance changed considerably. The banks of the Ljubljanica river were landscaped and several new stone and iron bridges were constructed. During that period, Ljubljana was home to the greatest Slovenian poet, France Prešeren (1800-1849), who made a name for himself for his Romantic poetry and endeavours to modernize the Slovenian language. He is particularly famous for his sonnets and the poem A Toast (Zdravljica), later adopted as Slovenia's national anthem. 1849 saw the arrival of the first train from Vienna. Eight years later, a railway connecting Ljubljana to Trieste was completed. In 1869, the population amounted to 22,593. The 1860s saw the foundation of the Slovenska matica national society. Ljubljana was becoming the nation's cultural centre. Not long after the Ljubljana Tobacco Factory was established in 1871 it was employing 2500 people. By then this city had become the centre of Slovenian nationalism under Austrian rule with having less than 30000 inhabitants and being very rural in appearance. In 1895 another, more powerful earthquake struck, forcing the city to rebuild once again. To Ljubljana’s great benefit, the Secessionist and Art Nouveau styles were all the rage in Central Europe at the time, and many of the wonderful buildings erected then still stand. After the earthquake, Ljubljana’s mayor, Ivan Hribar (mayor 1896 to 1910) spearheaded a large-scale rebuilding effort. Hribar was a Slovene nationalist and gave key projects to Slavic architects, particularly the Bosnian Josip Vancaš and the Slovenes Cyril Metod Koch and Maks Fabiani. Fabiani in particular was quite influential in Ljubljana, though he lived and worked in Vienna. It was he who introduced the Austrian Secessionist (Art Nouveau) style to the city, following the fashions of the Austrian capital. His architecture shows the evolution from the decorative Secessionist to the modernist phase, in which he concentrated on trying to use and re-create the traditional local elements in a modern way.
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