Maribor

Maribor (UKˈmærɪbɔːr , USˈmɑːr- , ˈmáːɾibɔɾ, ˈmaːʁiboːɐ̯; also known by other historical names) is the second-largest city in Slovenia and the largest city of the traditional region of Lower Styria. It is also the seat of the City Municipality of Maribor, the seat of the Drava statistical region and the Eastern Slovenia region. Maribor is also the economic, administrative, educational, and cultural centre of eastern Slovenia. Maribor was first mentioned as a castle in 1164, as a settlement in 1209, and as a city in 1254. Like most Slovene ethnic territory, Maribor was under Habsburg rule until 1918, when Rudolf Maister and his men secured the city for the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which then joined the Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1991 Maribor became part of independent Slovenia. Maribor, along with the Portuguese city of Guimarães, was selected the European Capital of Culture for 2012. Maribor was attested in historical sources as Marpurch 1145 (and later as Marchburch, Marburc, and Marchpurch), and is a compound of Middle High German march 'march (borderland)' + burc 'fortress'. In modern times, the town's German name was Marburg an der Drau (ˈmaʁbʊʁk ʔan deːɐ̯ ˈdʁaʊ̯; literally, 'Marburg on the Drava'). The Slovene name Maribor is an artificial Slovenized creation, coined by Stanko Vraz in 1836. Vraz created the name in the spirit of Illyrianism by analogy with the name Brandenburg (cf. Lower Sorbian Bramborska). Locally, the town was known in Slovene as Marprk or Marprog. The name Maribor was accepted among Slovenes in 1861, when Lovro Toman published a song named Mar i bor, giving the name a Slovene compound Mar ('to care') + i ('and') + bor ('to fight for'). In addition to its Slovene and German names, the city is also known as Marburgum in Latin and Marburgo in Italian. Timeline of Maribor The oldest known remnants of settlement in the Maribor area date back to the 5th millennium BC, at the time of the Chalcolithic.