The works of Jože Plečnik in Ljubljana – Human Centred Urban Design

Jože Plečnik was born in Ljubljana in 1872, studied under Otto Wagner in Vienna and worked in Wagner's office. He moved to Prague in 1911, and in 1920 President Tomáš Masaryk of Czechoslovakia appointed him chief architect for the renovation of Prague Castle. In 1921 he was invited home as a founding teacher of the new Ljubljana School of Architecture, and he worked in the city until his death in 1957.

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, Ljubljana changed from a provincial town into the symbolic capital of the Slovenian people. Between the two world wars Plečnik shaped squares, parks, streets, promenades, bridges, a library, churches, markets and a cemetery in dialogue with the older city. His Triple Bridge, which adds two footbridges beside a stone bridge of 1842, was designed in 1929, built between 1931 and 1932 and opened to traffic in April 1932.

The National and University Library was completed in 1941. In 2021 the Ljubljanica embankments and bridges, the 'green promenade' of Vegova Street with the library, Trnovo Bridge, the Roman walls at Mirje, the Church of St Francis of Assisi, the All Saints Garden at Žale cemetery and St Michael's Church in Črna Vas were inscribed as a World Heritage site.