Lower Carniola

Lower Carniola (Slovene: Dolenjska; German: Unterkrain) is a traditional region in Slovenia, the southeastern part of the historic Carniola region.

Geography [edit]

Typical Lower Carniolan landscape

Lower Carniola is confined by the Ljubljanica river with the city of Ljubljana and Lake Cerknica in the west, and by the Sava in the north. In the south the border runs along the Gorjanci mountains and the Krka river up to its confluence with the Sava near the town of Brežice in the east. The adjacent southernmost region down to the border with Croatia on the Kolpa river is called White Carniola and usually counted as part of the Lower Carniolan region.

Within the Kočevski Rog karst plateau, the mountains reach an altitude of up to 1,099 m (3,606 ft). The historic centre of Lower Carniola is Novo Mesto, while other towns include Kočevje, Grosuplje, Krško, Trebnje, Mirna, Črnomelj, Semič, and Metlika.

History [edit]

1714 map of Carniola by Johann Homann, Lower Carniola in green

In the 17th century, the Habsburg duchy of Carniola was internally divided into three administrative districts. This division was thoroughly described by the scholar Johann Weikhard von Valvasor in his 1689 work The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola. The districts were known in German as Kreise (kresija in old Slovene). They were: Upper Carniola with its centre in Ljubljana (formerly Kranj), comprising the northern areas of the duchy; Inner Carniola comprising the southwest, with its centre in Postojna, and Lower Carniola in the southeast, roughly corresponding to the mediæval Windic March of the Holy Roman Empire. While the bulk of the population spoke Slovene, a German-speaking exclave existed around Kočevje (Gottscheers) in the south.

This division remained, in different arrangements, up to the 1860s, when the old administrative districts were abolished and Lower Carniola was subdivided into the smaller Bezirke of Novo mesto (Rudolfswert), Kočevje (Gottschee) and Krško (Gurkfeld). Nevertheless, the regional identity remained strong also thereafter. Upon the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after World War I, Carniola was incorporated first into the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and then into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and it ceased to exist as a separate political and geographical unit. The Carniolan regional identity soon faded away, but the regional identification with its sub-units (Upper, Lower and, to a lesser extent, Inner Carniola) remained strong.