MARIBOR IN YEARS

2400-1900 B.C. - communal artifacts from the Copper Age (located by archeological excavations)

cca 800 B.C. - in the present territory of Maribor there were at least four Illyrian settlements.

cca 400 B.C. - the country was invaded by the Celts, who brought with them the culture of the early Iron Age and subjugated the Illyrians.

final years B.C. - the territory was conquered by the Romans; present day Maribor had only a small Roman settlement. It had a crossing over the Drava river and a confluence of roads to Celje, Ptuj, and Virunum (today Gospa Sveta in Carinthia). A border separated the two Roman provinces of Norik and Upper Pannonia.

until 400 A.D. the former Illyrian and Celtic population was Romanized.

after 568 the country was invaded by the Avars and Slavs, who settled it

cca 745 - the forefathers of the Slovenes came under the rule of the Germanic Franks: the feudal system strengthened the rule of foreign invaders.

843 - the division of the Frankish state; the region of present-day Maribor was incorporeted into the eastern Frankish state, which subsequently became part of the German Empire.

1147 - the territory of present-day Maribor became Styria; later a duchy (in 1180).

1164 - the first reliable mention of the castle in the border land (Marchburch), which gave the name to the settlement, noted below; the castle was situated on a hill, known today as the Piramida; it was build approximately in the middle of the Podravska Border Region, established by the German Empire for protection against the Magyars.

1204 - Maribor was first mentioned as a market-town.

1254 - Maribor is first mentioned as a town; it developed from the settlement on the Drava river bank below the Castle.

1278 - after the victory of Rudolf the Habsburg over Otocar II, Maribor began to prosper. It fortified itself with walls, towers, moats, and three large doors intended to keep invaders out of the town. Trade, crafts, and wine-growing flourished; the town had a monopoly on the wine trade with Carinthia, in the Drava region. In the town several ecclesiastical and lay noblemen established their authority. A large number of Jews moved into the town. They dealt mostly in the wine trade and in monetary matters. In the southeastern part of the town they established a quarter, with a synagogue. The Slovenes inhabited the northwestern part of the town.

1532 - the Turkish Sultan Suleiman II beseiged the town with an army of a hundred thousand men but failed to capture it.

1680 - the plague that ravaged the town five times in the seventeenth century was particulary severe that year; a third of the town population died.

1752 - Maribor became the administrative centre of the region.

1758 - the Jesuits established a secondary school (Gymnasium).

1846 - the Southern railway line, connecting Vienna with Trieste (1857), passed through the town; with it, the town began to flourish economically.

1848 - with the advent of the March revolution, the national guard was established; Maribor strengthened its position as the administrative centre of the region, thus uniting all Slovenes in Styria.

1859 - Bishop Anton Martin Slomsek transferred the seat of the Lavantine diocese from St. Andrews in Carinthia to Maribor. Almost all Styrian Slovenes came under its protection. The theological faculty became the first school of higher education in Maribor.

1862 - the town became industrialized with the main workshops of The Southern Railways.

1898 - Maribor became the seat of the regional court.

1899 - the Slovenes built for themselves Narodni dom - the National Home, the base of the political, economic, and cultural life of Styrian Slovenes.

1918 - on November 1st, the national Council took into its hands the governing of Slovene Styria; the military command was entrusted to General Rudolf Maister.

1918 - on November 23, General Rudolf Maister with his army disarmed the German militia (Schutzwehr) and thus secured Maribor for Slovenia.