Solčava

A village in the Upper Savinja Valley near the Austrian border, the largest settlement of its municipality and traditionally part of Styria. It was written as Sulçpach in 1268; the German name compounds Sulze, mineral springs, with Bach, creek, after the local ground. The modern Slovene form was artificially made in the nineteenth century from that German name, the first half reshaped to look more Slovene, the second replaced with -ava, a common suffix for streams. The parish church, dedicated to Mary of the Snows, is fifteenth-century and holds a thirteenth-century statue of the Virgin.