Experience Slovenia

Outside the gallery, a short walk leads to the old town, where today’s coffee-drinkers gather at the al fresco cafes lining the Ljubljanica River. If the capital, with its wealth of Secessionist and Baroque facades, is a microcosm of Slovenia’s ability to pack a big punch for its small size, it also embodies the country’s unhurried pace of life. In order to really understand the source of “Kofetarica”’s contented air, however, visitors need to get out of the city and into a country that elicits smiles at every turn.

Located between former empires, Slovenia is in many ways a meeting-place of cultural influences. Its role as an entrepot of the Venetian empire is reflected in the red-tiled roofs of Piran, on Slovenia’s sliver of Adriatic coast, among the best-preserved Italianate ports in Europe. Centuries of Habsburg rule leave their stamp on fortresses set on rocky promontories, or even, as in the case of Predjama Castle, housed within a giant cavern.

But for visitors keen to take the country slow, this cultural fusion is perhaps most obvious in the diversity of regional gastronomy. While Ljubljana restaurants like Restavracija Strelec are among Slovenia’s finest, many others are located in rural areas, or in medieval towns like Radovljica and Ptuj, in settings as characterful as the flavours on the plate: honey from Carniola, gibanica (a Haloze layer cake), piquant Tolminc cheese.