Let’s learn about Slovenia #7 – Maribor city

Maribor is the second-largest city in Slovenia with about 95,500 inhabitants in 2016.
It is also the largest city of the traditional region of Lower Styria and the seat of the City Municipality of Maribor.

On the Drava River lies Maribor Island (Mariborski otok).
The oldest public bath, still important and much visited place in Maribor, is located there.

There are two hills in Maribor: Calvary Hill and Pyramid Hill, both surrounded by vineyards. The latter dominates the northern border of the city. Ruins of the first Maribor castle from the 11th century and a chapel from the 19th century also stand there. The hill offers an easily accessible scenic overlook of Maribor and the countryside to the south over the Drava River.

Every June, the two-week Lent Festival (named after the waterfront district called Lent) is held, with hundreds of musical, theatrical and other events. Every year the festival attracts theatre, opera, ballet performers, classical, modern, and jazz musicians and dancers from all over the world, and of course many visitors.
There is also mime, magic shows are being held and acrobats perform during the festival.

Maribor is known for wine and culinary specialities of international and Slovene cuisine (mushroom soup with buckwheat mush, tripe, sour soup, sausages with Sauerkraut, cheese dumplings, apple strudel, special cheese cake called gibanica).
There are also many popular restaurants with Serbian cuisine. The Vinag Wine Cellar (Vinagova vinska klet), with the area of 20.000 m2 and the length of 2 kilometres, keeps 5,5 millions litres of wine.

The house of the oldest grapevine in the world (Hiša stare trte) at Lent grows the world’s oldest grapevine, which was in 2004 recorded in Guinness World Records. The grapevine of Žametovka is about 440 years old.