GORENJSKA 2025

The Gorenjska region is defined by the Sava river basin, the Alps, cultural and recreational tourism and cities that are centered around Kranj as a regional centre. It is home to around 200,000 residents.

Historically speaking, the region was under Germanic influences for nearly a millennium, with the overwhelming majority of its territory falling under the state of Carniola. Laying at the symbolic crossroads of Europe, Gorenjska easily enters into dialogue with both the east and the west, as well as with the north and the south. Once Yugoslavia’s well-developed northernmost republic, today it is again part of the south of Central Europe. We are northerners to former Yugoslavia and southerners to Central Europeans.

Our bid should be understood as an unmissable opportunity for the city’s regeneration and the revitalization of the cultural realm, given the region’s segmented yet functioning non-governmental cultural and environmental sectors, as well as their more sustainable partnerships with state and municipal institutes, municipalities themselves, and lastly, development agencies. To facilitate a link to the rest of Europe, opportunities based on the region’s cultural profile and the strategic coordination of content for urban development that connects human resources with implementational, technological, and educational capacities will be leveraged.

The priorities of using culture to unite the region include: raising the region’s international profile, strengthening the image of a connected region in its inhabitants’ eyes, a breath of fresh air for the region’s cultural and urban spheres, a pursuit of balance between economic and environmental factors in the use of public and private infrastructure, and of the natural environment itself, the encouragement of environmental awareness, and to provoke conversation about decentralization and regionalization.

As a candidate for the European Capital of Culture, Kranj aims to create a permanent cultural networks between the towns and institutions of Gorenjska region on the line of infinite iteration. With the project that anticipates the increased flow of visitors to the town and region, Kranj wants to create a sustainable model of innovative content and infrastructure projects that will – already in the preparation phase, enable to preserve the natural heritage and raise awareness of the necessity of a genuine attitude towards nature.

All municipalities of Gorenjska region unanimously support the candidacy of Kranj for the title of European Capital of Culture in 2025.