Aemona, Colonia Iulia Aemona
city · Ljubljana, Slovenia
About 350 m and 5 minutes on foot from the centre of Emona, plus time at the stop.
Walking times are estimates: the straight-line distance × 1.3 for streets, at 80 m a minute.
Photo: Matevž Paternoster, dokumentacija Muzeja in galerij mesta Ljubljane · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons
Stop 1 · wall · Ljubljana
A long wall of rubble stone, grassed along the top, with square towers projecting from it, runs through a park between Aškerčeva cesta and the street Mirje, from the junction with Barjanska cesta to the junction with Snežniška ulica.
Roman Emona was a walled town laid out in the centre of what is now Ljubljana, built by the year AD 15 and lived in until the 6th century. It lies under the modern city, so you see it in pieces: two excavated houses kept as open-air parks and a stretch of the town wall.
The best of it is in two small archaeological parks run by the city museum (MGML). At Emonan House, in the former Jakopič Garden at Mirje, excavations in 1963–1964 uncovered a house of the late 4th and early 5th centuries. What you walk round are its foundations: a summer room once floored with a two-coloured mosaic, and a winter room whose hypocaust — the brick underfloor heating — is still in place. The Early Christian Centre on Erjavčeva cesta, opposite Cankarjev dom, is a house begun in the 1st century that was rebuilt several times, until one part became a chapel and, in the early 5th century, a baptistery was added with a small pool at its centre. Its floor mosaic carries the names of the townspeople who paid for it (MGML).
The third piece is the southern town wall at Mirje, renovated in the 20th century by the architect Jože Plečnik and now a public park; it has its own page, below. The operator also publishes a circular trail of ten Roman sites across the centre.
As a reason to go to Ljubljana, no — Emona is a scatter of foundations, not a town you can walk through, and the houses survive as low foundations. As part of a day in Ljubljana, in summer, yes: the two parks are well presented, and the hypocaust and the baptistery mosaics are the kind of domestic detail that bigger sites bury. Out of season the parks are shut and the wall at Mirje is what is left.
Everything is in central Ljubljana, on foot. Emonan House is at Mirje 4, the Early Christian Centre at Erjavčeva 18, and tickets are sold at the City Museum, Gosposka 15, together with a map of the Roman trail. The nearest bus stop to the centre of the Roman town is Drama, about 120 m from the point on the map (OpenStreetMap).
The parks open only in season — 15 May to 15 September in 2026 — from 14.00 to 18.00 on weekdays except Monday and from 10.00 to 18.00 at weekends. A ticket is €6 (€4 reduced, €14 for a family); €12 buys a combined ticket with the City Museum, which is open all year from Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 to 18.00. Guided tours of the parks run on published dates for €11 (MGML, read 26 September 2026 — check before travelling).
Before you go
Hours and prices checked 26 September 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.
The Ljubljana basin was already settled in prehistory, and trade routes between the Italian peninsula, the Baltic and the Balkans crossed it. After the Roman conquest in the second half of the 1st century BC a military post was most likely set up below Castle Hill; by AD 15 the Romans had built a rectangular town with strong stone walls and, on three sides, a double moat, with all the features of a Roman castrum. Its first inhabitants were settlers from Italy and Gaul, their slaves and discharged soldiers (sl.wikipedia). The area belonged first to the province of Cisalpine Gaul and later to Italy itself (MGML).
The town suffered in the Marcomannic wars and from plague in the 2nd century, and in 238 its own citizens burned and abandoned it rather than let the army of the usurper Maximinus Thrax use it (sl.wikipedia). The Visigoths camped by Emona in the winter of 408/9, the Huns attacked it in 452, and the Lombards passed through on their way to Italy in 568; after the first half of the 6th century nobody lived there any more (en.wikipedia).
36 km · fort · Ajdovščina
The fort follows the ground in an irregular oval, 250 m long and up to 75 m wide.
Straight-line distances.
Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| Pleiades 197258 | CC BY |
| Wikidata Q148327 | CC0 |
| Vici.org 1970 | CC BY-SA (text), CC0 (metadata) |
| OpenStreetMap relation/15464136 | ODbL |
| Wikipedia (en) — Emona | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Wikipedia (sl) — Emona | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| MGML (Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana) — Arheopark Emona, the operator's page | licence not recorded |
| MGML — City Museum of Ljubljana, hours and tickets | licence not recorded |
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