Slovenia Winter Wonderland: 7 Days of Snowy Adventure

Be sure to check out this beautiful church and spend some time in the surrounding square.

You are sure to see lots of churches on any trip to Europe, but the Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity is certainly not like most other Baroque churches from the 1700's. With its irregular roof line, six columns surrounding the entrance, and many windows, the facade looks more like that of a palace than a typical Baroque church. The beautiful white interior is also unusual in that it is not painted, although there are several ornate altars and paintings to provide some color. The church is located on Congres Square, i.e. Kongresni trg. It is a popular, grassy park shaded by leafy trees and fringed by more architectural gems. It's also a good spot to come to in the evenings for quieter repast if you wish to avoid the crowds thronging both sides of the riverbank. On one corner of the square is Kazina (Casino), a smart Classicist mansion built in 1837 for entertaining the Ljubljana elite. Cafe Zvezda housed inside Kazina is said to serve up some of the best cakes and desserts in town. The Slovene Philharmonic Hall hosts one of the oldest musical institutions in Europe, which was one of the foremost in the Hapsburg Empire. Its honorary members included Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart, and Gustav Mahler was the in-house conductor in 1881-82. Next door is the huge neo-Renaissance university building.

Discover Slovenia's art and culture at the National Gallery and other nearby institutions.

The National Gallery is the art gallery of Slovenia, with a permanent collection of art dating from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. For the artistically minded, there's a cluster of institutions nearby that you should definitely check out, including the horse-shoe shaped Opera House, and the Museum of Modern Art, which picks up where the National Gallery leaves off, including exhibits from the influential Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovene Art) movement of the mid-1980s. Very close by on Prešernova cesta is the building that houses both the National Museum and the Natural History Museum; it's at the latter that you'll find an almost complete 20,000-year-old skeleton of a mammoth found near Kamnik in 1938. The city's main public park, Tivoli Park, opens up just across the road from the Museum of Modern Art.

Take a picture with the iconic dragon statues on this pedestrian bridge.

The bridge is a beautiful piece of Secessionist architecture with four carved, spitting, feisty-tailed dragons (the city symbol) sitting atop chunky pylons at each corner of the bridge. Just next to the bridge you'll discover the Market Colonnade, an elongated, gently curving pavilion sheltering a veritable smorgasbord of lovely food shops and a downstairs fish market. The colonnade runs along the length of the riverbank all the way to the Triple Bridge.

Old Town

Ljubljana may be one of the smallest and newest European capitals without world-famous monuments, but what it lacks in renown it more than compensates for in spark and self-confidence in comparison to the introspection of Europe's larger cities. Having suffered little trauma from the breakup of Yugoslavia other than the 'Ten-Day War' in 1991, the Slovenian capital is now an obviously prosperous and self-assured place that has successfully absorbed and integrated a whole variety of external influences from Austria, the Mediterranean and the Balkans over the centuries, and then adapted and tailored them to produce a unique distillation that's remarkable in such a small country. It's one of the continent's greenest and most liveable capitals, having been awarded by the EU with the coveted Green Capital of Europe title for 2016. Car traffic is restricted in the center as one street per year is pedestrianized, leaving the leafy banks of the emerald-green Ljubljanica River, which flows through the city's heart, free for pedestrians and cyclists. There's even a free taxi service in the car-free city center, which is a golfcart-like electric vehicle called Kavalir. It travels slowly around the pedestrianized streets and you can jump on and off anytime you like (it holds up to 5 people at a time). In summer, cafes and restaurants set up shaded seating along the river, making it one of the liveliest (and busiest) open-air dining areas around.

Take a walk across the most famous sight in Ljubljana - the enchanting Triple Bridge.

The bridge is a brilliant piece of architecture and the city's most photographed landmark. To get an idea of how 'green' and sustainable the city has become the Triple Bridge very recently still had vehicular traffic coursing over its beautifully balustraded concourse. The 'triple' in the bridge is the result of national architect Jože Plečnik's decision in 1929 to broaden the existing central bridge dating from 1842 with two lateral footbridges, in order to make access to the oldest part of town on the right bank of the river safer and more convenient for pedestrians; to top it off, he added the Renaissance balustrades, based on the rising bridges of Venice's waterways, and rows of lamps, all of which gives the bridge a magical appearance at night. Geographically and socially, the pulsing heart of the city is Prešernov trg, a small and animated square on the left bank of the river next to the Triple Bridge. It is named after France Prešeren, the national poet, whose statue also adorns the square. The square is Ljubljana's main point of reference where open-air cafes do a brisk trade, and street performers and musicians keep the tourist crowds entertained during the summer months.

Be sure to check out this beautiful church and spend some time in the surrounding square.

You are sure to see lots of churches on any trip to Europe, but the Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity is certainly not like most other Baroque churches from the 1700's. With its irregular roof line, six columns surrounding the entrance, and many windows, the facade looks more like that of a palace than a typical Baroque church. The beautiful white interior is also unusual in that it is not painted, although there are several ornate altars and paintings to provide some color. The church is located on Congres Square, i.e. Kongresni trg. It is a popular, grassy park shaded by leafy trees and fringed by more architectural gems. It's also a good spot to come to in the evenings for quieter repast if you wish to avoid the crowds thronging both sides of the riverbank. On one corner of the square is Kazina (Casino), a smart Classicist mansion built in 1837 for entertaining the Ljubljana elite. Cafe Zvezda housed inside Kazina is said to serve up some of the best cakes and desserts in town. The Slovene Philharmonic Hall hosts one of the oldest musical institutions in Europe, which was one of the foremost in the Hapsburg Empire. Its honorary members included Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart, and Gustav Mahler was the in-house conductor in 1881-82. Next door is the huge neo-Renaissance university building.