Goričane Mansion

The Goričane Castle is a Baroque mansion that once stood on the hill above the current-day Goričane mansion, on the road from Medvode to Škofja Loka.

It was left to ruins in the first half of the 17^th century, and now only a few stone remains are left. According to some sources, the castle was built around the year 928. However, the castle researcher Ivan Stopar dates its construction as from the 12^th century. In a document from 928, a nobleman named Pribislav is mentioned to have received some estates near Medovde from the Emperor Oton III. It is supposed that this was the Goriče estate. The first documents recording the existence of the castle are from 1178, when Ulrich gifted it to the Stična monastery. In the documents from 1256, it is mentioned as the Goričane Castle, and in the documents from 1261 as the Goriče Castle. The 17^thcentury historian Johann Weikhard Freiherr von Valvasor (Slovenian: Janez Vajkard Valvazor) writes that the castle was owned by “Ulitzamannus von Gortschach”; however, the knights of Goričane (von Gortschach) were only ministerialis of the Counts of Spanheim. Afterwards, the castle was owned by the Counts of Sternberg and, from the second half of the 14^th century, by the Counts of Ortenburg. After the Counts of Ortenburg died out, the castle was inherited by the Counts of Celje. After the Counts of Celje also died out in 1456, the castle and the dominion went to the House of Habsburg.

In December 1461, Emperor Frederick III of Habsbourg established the Diocese of Ljubljana and gave it the Goričane Castle. The castle was badly damaged in the earthquake in 1511 and then ravaged by a fire caused by a lightning strike in 1613. During the Reformation period, the Bishop of Ljubljana Tomaž Hren stopped restoring it and the castle was left in ruins. The remains of the old castle were used by Bishop Oton, Count of Puchheim (1641–1664), to build a new mansion nearby. The construction began in 1631 and ended in 1634. The material from the old caste was used in the new building. In 1934, the regional conference of the Communist Party of Slovenia was held in the mansion. One of the participants, under the code name Rudi, was Josip Broz Tito. The mansion was owned by the Diocese of Ljubljana until the end of WWII, when it was nationalised. First, the mansion was converted into apartments, and then in 1962 they started renovating it as a museum. Two years later (in 1964), the Museum of Non-European Culture, a dislocated unit of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum, moved into the mansion. It moved out in 2001. There was also a regional conference memorial room in the mansion.

After Slovenia became independent, the Archdiocese of Ljubljana submitted a denationalisation claim for the mansion. In 1995, the claim was refused, as the mansion housed a museum, but after the museum was closed down, the mansion was returned to the Archdiocese. In 2004, the Archdiocese began renovating the mansion and its surroundings. As the renovation began when Cardinal Rode was the Archbishop of Ljubljana, his coat of arms and the coat of arms of the Archdiocese of Ljubljana are now depicted on the entry portal.

Unfortunately, the Goričane Mansion is now closed to the public.