| Descripton: |
The Ljubljanica has a rather split personality. It meanders lazily through
the Ljubljana Marshes (known as the Barje) during the dry season, but, with the
help of its numerous tributaries, swells rapidly during periods of heavy rain.
Although the floods that the Ljubljanica was often prone to cause were never a
great threat to life and limb, they were a nuisance to the citizens of
Ljubljana. At the same time this most schizophrenic of streams also provided
those same citizens with fish and, more importantly, it had been a reliable
traffic artery, traversed by boatmen who carried a variety of goods on their
shallow draughted river vessels, since Roman times. The rivermen only stopped
operating when the Vienna-Trieste railway was built through the town in the
mid-19th century. The shrewish river was tamed by a series of civil engineering
projects, beginning with the Gruber Canal (completed in 1789) which diverted
flood water away from the town centre; a deepening of the riverbed in the early
20th century; as well as the construction of a regulated channel moderated by a
series of weirs - including Plečnik«s utilitarian style sluice-gates (1940) just
downstream from Ambrose Square (Ambrožev Trg). At the turn of the century the
right (eastern) bank of the Ljubljanica river at Prule, just a short distance
before it entered the city centre, was used as a bathing area, and boats for
recreation were available for hire. Among these there were also the racing boats
of the Ljubljana Sports Club, the contemporary successor of which is the Livada
Canoe and Kayak Club.
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