Maribor is the second biggest town in Slovenia and is the capital of the Styria province.
Maribor is situated between important traffic routes and has used the development of the railroad in the past, so that it developed much faster than the city Ptuj that was bigger and more developed before the railroad was build. Maribor has a great connection with near capitals with the railroad and great highways. Five capitals are more or less on the same distance from Maribor, these are Ljubljana, Zagreb, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest.
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University Town
The town have around 115.000 inhabitants. A lot of them are students, because Maribor is a University town, and the students change the city’s vibe into a lively city thought most of the year.
Maribor is the center of the North-eastern part of Slovenia in more than one way. It is the economic, cultural, educational, trade, financial and administrative center of the region. The town also host the office of the Maribor Archdiocese , the University of Maribor, Post of Slovenia and many other important institutions and major companies.
Maribor was first mentioned in the 12th century, when the place was a part of the Frankish border county. They needed protection from the Hungarian invasions, so they build a fort where today’s Piramida stays, called the castrum Marchburch.
The town developed into a market and a city, its Slovenian inhabitants distorted it’s name from the German Marburg into Marpork, and Stanko Vraz was the first one, who started using the name Marbor and later Maribor. It took another 25 years that the name was established, so the name is being wide-spread used since 1861.
The every year skiing world-cup competition, the Golden fox or Zlata lisica, that takes place just next to the town, make the Maribor something special.
Festival Lent
People, living in Maribor feel, that it is most a football town, but the town is known around the world for the festival Lent, that attracts thousands of visitors every year with concerts of great stars like Ray Charles, B. B. King and James Brown. The festival attracts more and more people every year, the last year’s events attracted over half a million of people, that have seen more than 400 events. The number of events make the festival one of the bigger festivals in the world.
