A walled Roman encampment was built In Ljubljana in the mid-1st century BCE by Roman legionnaires and developed into the settlement of Emona (Iulia Aemona), though the area had been settled earlier by the Veneti, the Illyrians, and the Celts, beginning about 1000 BCE.
Sitting on the route to Pannonia and commanding the Ljubljana Gap, the strategically located city was destroyed by Attila in the mid-5th century. The Slovene Slavic tribes, migrating westward, rebuilt it in the 12th century, when its name was recorded first as Laibach (1144) and then as Luvigana (1146). It gained city rights in 1220.
In the late 13th century, rule passed to the Habsburgs, and in 1335 Ljubljana became the capital of the Habsburg-Austrian province of Carniola.
From 1461 Ljubljana was the seat of a bishop. Taken by the French in 1809, it became the government seat of the Illyrian Provinces. In 1821 the Congress of Laibach, a meeting of members of the Holy Alliance, was held in Ljubljana. The completion of the southern (Vienna-Trieste) railway line in 1849 stimulated the economic and cultural growth of Ljubljana, which became a centre of Slovene nationalism under Austrian rule. Ljubljana gained a sugar refinery, a brewery, a foundry, and a paper and textile mill (later converted into a tobacco factory).
Oldest restaurant, circa 1776, with largest catering gardens for about 100 guests in the center of Ljubljana
