Ljubljana

Inhabited since prehistoric times, on the trade route between the northern Adriatic and the Danube, north of the country’s largest marsh. A Roman city called Emona stood here in antiquity; the town itself is first mentioned in the first half of the twelfth century. It was the historical capital of Carniola and under Habsburg rule from the Middle Ages until the empire dissolved in 1918, then capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia within Yugoslavia, and since 1991 capital of the independent state. In German it was Laibach, a name used in the region until 1918.