At Ljubljana City Hall on Thursday 21 January 2010, Mayor Zoran Janković officially received participants of the ‘Ivan Hribar in times of conflict’ international symposium.

This international symposium, prepared by the Institute for Cultural History of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, concerns Ivan Hribar, arguably the 19th and 20th centuries’ most important Mayor of Ljubljana.

For the City of Ljubljana authorities, knowledge of Ivan Hribar is of great importance. He introduced high administrative standards to the city in a range of fields – from technical areas to building statues. Ljubljana was raised from the status of metropolis of the old Austrian Duchy of Carniola to the new Slovenian capital. In doing so, it goes without saying that he relied on the best experts obtainable in any particular field (such as the urban planning and construction of Max Fabiani, who was also artistic adviser to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand). Ljubljana's rise to the status of a major central-European city was largely his work, for which the city owes him its gratitude, although not all of his work bore immediate fruit (such as a commitment to a Slovenian university, which only came to be in 1919).