Hereditary homage to Charles VI in Ljubljana

Our colleague Vanja Kočevar has written a chapter for the book Stadt im Wandel. Der Donau-Karpatenraum im langen 18. Jahrhundert/Cities in Transition. The Danube-Carpathien area in the long 18th century, published by Peter Lang. The chapter is entitled Ljubljana als Schauplatz der Erbhuldigung an Kaiser Karl Vl. im Jahre 1728. Herrscherrepräsentation im öffentlichen Raum am Beispiel der krainischen Hauptstadt [Ljubljana as the scene of the hereditary homage to Emperor Charles VI in 1728. The representation of the ruler in public space using the example of the Carniolan capital city].

The hereditary homage of the Duchy of Carniola to its territorial prince, Emperor Charles VI, in 1728 brought about a number of innovations in the field of royal representation in the open spaces of the city of Ljubljana. According to the available information, this was the first hereditary homage in Ljubljana for which two triumphal arches were built. The first, in front of the Lieutenant's Gate, was permanent and adorned the city until 1791, while the second, in front of the Town Hall, was a temporary architectural creation. Other "temporary" creations include the decoration of the town buildings with tapestries and paintings in the streets through which the Emperor's entry and the procession of the Succession passed, the lighting of the town and the two luxurious ships built by the provincial estates for the Emperor and Prince Francis Stephen of Lorraine. From the point of view of representation in public spaces, the Carniolan hereditary homage of 1728 followed contemporary Central European trends, and Ljubljana, with its rich decoration and the quality of the sculptures contributed by Francesco Robba for the triumphal arches, took advantage of the large number of visitors to present the new Baroque image it had adopted after the defeat of the Turks at Vienna in 1683 to the court and a wider public through the printed media.