The Kos Manor (Slovene : Kosova graščina) is a 16th-century manor house located in the Murova neighborhood of the town of Jesenice, Slovenia, at the street address of Cesta maršala Tita 64. It is one of four so-called "ironworks castles" built in the area during the 16th and early 17th centuries by owners of local iron-mining and -processing facilities, in what were then the clustered settlements of Plavž, Sava, Murova and Javornik, amalgamated into the town of Jesenice in 1929. The Bucellini-Ruard Manor in Sava is another survivor of the original four; the Plavž and Javornik manors have been torn down.
Slovene or Slovenian belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 2.1 million Slovenian people and is one of the 24 official and working languages of the European Union.
A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals with manorial tenants and great banquets. The term is today loosely applied to various country houses, frequently dating from the late medieval era, which formerly housed the gentry.
Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a sovereign state located in southern Central Europe at a crossroads of important European cultural and trade routes. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, and the Adriatic Sea to the southwest. It covers 20,273 square kilometers (7,827 sq mi) and has a population of 2.07 million. One of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia is a parliamentary republic and a member of the United Nations, of the European Union, and of NATO. The capital and largest city is Ljubljana.
The Kos manor was built in 1521 by Sigismund (Žiga) of Dietrichstein, a leaseholder of the Bucelleni family, owners of the Sava ironworks. It is located in what was then the heart of the Murova settlement, at the foot of the path leading to the Church of St. Leonard atop a small hill a few hundred metres away.
The manor is mentioned in period documents as the "old belopeš castle," in reference to the ancestral home of its builders the Bucelleni family, the village of Bela Peč ("White Furnace," Italian : Fusine), between Rateče and Tarvisio in present-day Italy. [1] It was also described in Valvasor's 1689 survey The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola.
Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian, together with Sardinian, is by most measures the closest language to Vulgar Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria. It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece, and is generally understood in Corsica and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. In spite of not existing any Italian community in their respective national territories and of not being spoken at any level, Italian is included de jure, but not de facto, between the recognized minority languages of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania. Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages.
Rateče is a village in the Municipality of Kranjska Gora, in the far northwest corner of Slovenia. It is located in the upper part of the Upper Sava Valley, between the Sava Dolinka and Ziljica rivers, a tributary of the Drava. Further up the valley is the Rateče border crossing to Italy. Rateče is the closest Slovenian village to the summit of Mount Peč, the point where the borders of Austria, Italy, and Slovenia meet.
Tarvisio is a comune in the Province of Udine, the northeastern part of the autonomous Friuli Venezia Giulia region in Italy.
The manor obtained its current name in 1821, when its then-owner, the local merchant Frančišek Pavel Kos, enlarged and renovated it in neoclassical style. At some point thereafter it was acquired by the Ruard family, from whom it passed into the hands of the KID company in 1872, by then the sole operator of the local ironworks. Ten years later it was purchased by the Jesenice municipal government, initially for use as a public school, in which capacity it served from 1883-1915. In the interwar period the manor, by then commonly known as the "old school" (stara šola) was converted first into apartments and city offices and later into a courthouse and prison; it saw use as the latter during World War II as well, when the occupying Wehrmacht used the building as a transfer prison.
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.
The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy) and the Luftwaffe. The designation "Wehrmacht" replaced the previously used term Reichswehr, and was the manifestation of the Nazi regime's efforts to rearm Germany to a greater extent than the Treaty of Versailles permitted.
Currently the manor is administered by the Upper Sava Museum Jesenice and serves various cultural and public functions: [2]
- Ground floor: art gallery (with rotating exhibits), permanent exhibit "Occupation Terror of the Years 1941-1945"
- First floor: permanent exhibit (since 1984) "The Workers' Movement and the National Liberation Struggle," on the 19th and 20th century workers' movement and its connection to local partisan resistance against the German occupation
- Second floor: multipurpose hall for municipal functions and cultural events, wedding hall
