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Travel and Tourism in Slovenia
Travel alerts, currency, climate, transit, health, and safety information for visitors to Slovenia.
Practical Information
Travel alert status, currency, climate, and transit details.
- Travel Alert Status
- Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions
- Time Difference
- UTC+1 (6 hours ahead of Washington, DC, during Standard Time)
- Currency
- euro (EUR)
- Climate
- Slovenia is temperate with four seasons, but the topography creates three individual climates. The northwest has an Alpine climate with strong influences from the Atlantic and abundant precipitation. Temperatures in the Alpine valleys are moderate in summer but cold in winter. The coast and a large part of Primorska as far as the Soca Valley has a Mediterranean climate with warm sunny weather much of the year and mild winters. Most of eastern Slovenia has a Continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. The average temperature in July is 68-75 °F in the interior while on the coast it is around 82-85 °F. Ljubljana sits in a valley, and often has fog or rain covering the city. Slovenia gets most of its rain in the spring (May and June) and autumn (October and November). January is the coldest month with an average temperature of 30°F, and July is the warmest, with an average temperature of 70°F. The mean average temperature in Ljubljana is 50°F. Average annual precipitation is 31 inches in the east and 117 inches in the northeast, on account of heavier snowfall.
- Language(s) Spoken
- The official language is Slovene, a Slavic language. The language has a special language construct that indicates two people or things, separate to singular and plural. Slovene uses Roman characters, but excludes q,w,and x. The oldest documents preserved date back to 1000 AD. Slovene resisted the pressure to "Germanize" the language. The next most used language is English.
- Ethnic Groups
- Slovene 92%, Croat 1%, Serb 0.5%, Hungarian 0.4%, Bosniak 0.3%, other 5.8% (1991)
- National Holiday
- Independence Day/Statehood Day, 25 June (1991)
- Geographic Coordinates
- 46 07 N, 14 49 E
- Location
- south Central Europe, Julian Alps between Austria and Croatia
- Airports
- 14
Destinations
Regions and cities, top sights, national parks, UNESCO sites, and festivals for visitors.
Jože Ple?nik and the City as Masterpiece
No figure in Slovenian cultural history is more central to the country's contemporary identity than the architect Jože Ple?nik, and no city in Europe owes more to a single architect's vision than Ljubljana does to his. Ple?nik was born in Ljubljana in 1872, studied under the great Viennese architect Otto Wagner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and subsequently worked and taught in Vienna and Prague before returning to Ljubljana in 1921 to take up a professorship at the newly established University of Ljubljana's School of Architecture. He was then forty-nine years old, at the height of his powers, and he would spend the remaining thirty-six years of his life transforming the city of his birth into what is arguably the most completely architect-shaped small capital in Europe.
Ple?nik's work in Ljubljana was not a series of individual commissions. It was a comprehensive urban vision, executed building by building and public space by public space over three decades, coherent in its references to classical antiquity and its innovations upon those references, distinctive in its use of materials and its relationship to the human scale. He designed bridges, markets, churches, libraries, fountains, lamp posts, and park pavilions. He laid out promenades and riverfront walks.
Health and Safety
Medical facilities, vaccinations, disease risk, and sanitation conditions.
Adequate medical care is readily available. Travelers to Slovenia may obtain a list of English-speaking physicians on the U.S. Embassy’s website. Antibiotics, as well as other U.S.-equivalent prescription medications are available at local pharmacies. In Slovenia all medications, including drugs considered over-the-counter and first aid supplies, are dispensed through pharmacies (called “lekarna”). Please see the Embassy’s website for a list of pharmacies open 24 hours.