Kranjska Gora

Area Profile

The best known Slovenijan Resort, located within six kilometres (four miles) of both Austrian and Italian borders, Kranjska Gora offers high value holidays in the beautiful scenery of the Julian Alps.

The town is both the municipal centre and the largest town in the Zgornjesavska valley, one of the most breathtaking alpine valleys. The valley has developed into a major tourist and sports region, famed primarily for its World Cup competitions in Alpine skiing and ski flights on the giant ski-jump in Planica.

Accommodation is centred on large, high calibre, modern, comfortable hotels often slopeside and with good facilities. Families are especially well catered for with easy to intermediate ski slopes the most common; a good choice of family friendly, high-value places to eat and a good choice of off-slope facilities the whole famnily can enjoy - such as toboganning or indoor swimming pools.

Kranjska Gora was first mentioned by the Slovenian historian Valvasor. In those early times when Kranjska Gora was still under development, the valley was owned by the counts of Briksen and Ortenburg. Later, the land was inherited by the Counts of Celje and in 1431 Count Friderik II built the Bela pec castle here.

In the times of Turkish raids, the first house had been built at Srednji vrh where beacons were lit to alert the surrounding villages that the Turks were approaching. The house is still known as pri Merkeljnu, which is derived from the verb to look out, to this day.

On 14th December 1870, the LjubljanaRateceTarvisio railway line was opened and between the two World Wars, this contributed to the development of tourism and mountaineering, then continued to have a positive affect on the valleys economy.