The Legend Says ...

The beginnings of Ptujska Gora are wrapped in a mystery, since the church isn't directly mentioned in any of the historical documents. The indirect written sources, however, are consistent with the legend of its origin, which has been preserved in oral tradition to the present day. The legend says that a Lord at the Wurenberg (Vurberk) castle had an only child, a blind daughter. One day, when praying to the Mary, the blind girl saw a light in the distance – on a hill near Ptuj – and she miraculously healed. She asked her parents to take her to the place where she saw the light. The grateful father took her there and decided to build a church in honour of the Virgin Mary. One of the sources, confirming that the church was built by the order of the Lord of Ptuj, is a travel diary of Paolo Santonino (1487). 

In 2010, Ptujska Gora celebrated 600 years of the founding of the church. As a memory of the legend, Marta Mikolič designed a statue of the blind girl looking toward the hill.

The most important data on the founding of the church have been obtained from inventory registers of the archive of the Lords of Stubenberg at the Vurberk castle dating from the years 1467, 1498 and 1543 in which the documents are registered merely in the form of short regests (registers). The inventory includes the regest of the document by which pope Boniface granted Ulrik Walsee permission to build a church on Ptujska Gora. Considering the pontificate of pope Boniface IX (1389-1404) and the time of death of Ulrik IV Walsee in 1400 it can be dated between the years 1389 and 1400. Between 1390 and 1397/98, Ulrik IV Walsee was a guardian to his under-age cousin Bernard, Lord of Ptuj, who was considered the founder of the church on Ptujska Gora. The most significant for the dating of the completion of the church and the founding of the main benefice proved to be the regest of the deed with which Otto, priest at St. Laurence, permitted Bernard, Lord of Ptuj, to post his own curate at Ptujska Gora.

I still haven't bought a tripod, but it's about time I do. :/

Lego

What's the slogan for Lego? Find your inspiration? Well, this carnival group certainly found it!

The LEGO city from Mala vas was one of my favourite ones this year and won the first place at the 52nd carnival parade. Congratulations!

 

First Carnival Impressions

First photos of the 52nd International Ethnographic and Carnival Parade in Ptuj. These lovely Mozart dolls finished at place 6.

Music Box Puppets / Lutke iz glasbene skrinjice, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography ) 

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

Music Box Puppets, Stojnci (Kurentovanje 2012 © Suzie Blue Photography )

It's a Kind of Magic

 One dream, one soul, one prize, 
one goal, one golden glance of what should be. 
It’s a kind of magic.
One flash of light that shows the way ...

                                                (A Kind of Magic, Queen)

Ptujski most (2012)

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Decadence

Decadence (2012 © Suzie Blue Photography)

                                                            ...............

Ptuj at Night

Ptuj is the oldest city in Slovenia. There is evidence that the area was settled in the Stone Age. In the Late Iron Age it was settled by Celts. By the 1st century BC, the settlement was controlled by Ancient Rome. In 69 AD, Vespasian was elected Roman Emperor by the Danubian legions in Ptuj, and the first written mention of the city of Ptuj is from the same year. The city of Poetovio was the base-camp of Legio XIII Gemina in Pannonia. The name originated in the times of Emperor Trajan, who granted the settlement city status and named it Colonia Ulpia Traiana Poetovio in 103. 

Ptuj, 2011 © Suzie Blue Photography

Read and see more ............

The city had 40,000 inhabitants until it was plundered by the Huns in 450. In 570 the city was occupied by Eurasian Avars and Slavic tribes. Ptuj became part of the Frankish Empire after the fall of Avar state at the end of 8th century. Between 840 and 874 it belonged to the Slavic Balaton Principality of Pribina and Kocelj. Between 874 and 890 Ptuj gradually came under the influence of the Archbishopric of Salzburg; city rights passed in 1376 began an economic upswing for the settlement. As Pettau, it was incorporated into the Duchy of Styria in 1555.

Pettau was a battleground during the Ottoman wars in Europe and suffered from fires in 1684, 1705, 1710, and 1744. Its population and importance began to decline in the 19th century, however, after the completion of the Vienna-Trieste route of the Austrian Southern Railway, as the line went through Marburg (Maribor) instead.

According to the 1910 Austro-Hungarian census, 86% of the population of Pettau's Old Town was German-speaking, while the population of the surrounding villages predominantly spoke Slovene. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, Pettau was included in the short-lived Republic of German Austria, but after the military intervention of the Slovenian general Rudolf Maister, the entire territory of Lower Styria was included into the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (Yugoslavia). During the interwar period, the number and the percentage of those identifying as Germans in the city, which was renamed Ptuj, decreased rapidly, although a relatively strong ethnic German minority remained. After the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Ptuj was occupied by Nazi Germany. From 1941 to 1944 the town's Slovenian population was dispossessed and deported. Their homes were taken over by German speakers from South Tyrol and the Gottschee County, who had themselves been evicted according to an agreement between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. These German immigrants, along with the native German Pettauer, were expelled to Austria in 1945; many later settled in North America.

Since 1945 Ptuj has been populated almost completely by Slovenians.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Ptuj, 2011 © Suzie Blue Photography