Gorenjska lies in the north-west of Slovenia. The region has 197,904 inhabitants, which is
9.9% of the Slovene population. The central city is Kranj. The region borders on
two neighbouring countries, that is to say Austria (Carinthia) to the north and
Italy (Friuli-Venezia Giulia) to the north-west.
The Gorenjska Region in Slovenia is a mixture of high-populated,
high-urbanised areas and mountain spare populated areas: overall surface is
2,137 square km. Here are still a lot of fields, pastures, forests and undamaged
nature. It exists exclusively in
ethnical territory of Slovene nation and today it is only a museum in the open
and remnant of former times. In the background you can see Kamniske Alpe and are
the second largest group of mountains in Slovenia, which
are also some 300 meters lower on average from Julian Alps.
Though the notion of Slovenia as the green garden of Europe on the sunny side
of the Alps" has been around for some time, it must be said that the
Gorenjska region is a true pearl of nature.
Here crystal-clear rivers stream through valleys beneath the rounded peaks of the Karavanke mountain range and
the precipitous rock walls of the Julian Alps. The weary traveller may rest his
gaze on the green slopes of the hills surrounding Skofja Loka, or behold the
snowy peaks of the Kamnisko-Savinjske Alps to the east. The Alps were formed
many years ago, during the Tertiary Period, and the valleys of Gorenjska were
already inhabited by the early Iron Age. Iron ore was mined even back then, a
tradition that has survived to this very day. The area around Bled was densely
populated at the time of the Roman Empire's decline, while Kranj and Radovljica
became the administrative centres of the region during the Middle Ages, due
mainly to their favourable geographical location. Important roads and railroads
criss-cross Gorenjska, leading to Central Europe via the Karavanke road and
railroad tunnels, as well as over the border passes at Korensko Sedlo, Ljubelj
and Jezersko, or towards the Adriatic over Vrsi4è Pass or Kanalska dolina.