Lake Bled

Basic information:
Bled has a population of 5,476. Its elevation is 500 meters. Lake Bled is 2,120 meters long, 1,380 meters wide, and up to 30 meters deep.

The First Inhabitants of Bled:
The first traces of humans in Bled date back to the Stone Age. In the Iron Age, when the mining of iron was begun in the Alpine regions, settlement increased. Archeologists have discovered 80 gravesites from the late Iron Age (800 to 600 BC).

Slavic Era:
Settlement by the Slavs took place in two waves. The first of these was in the 7th century, followed by a second in the 9th and 10th centuries. The most likely Slavic settlements were in the places which became the villages of Mlino, Želeče, Zagorice, Grad and Rečica in the late-medieval period. Archaeological findings from the first Slavic settlement illustrate the culture of the Slavic state of King Samo (632-658 A.D.) and the late antiquarian tradition, while the findings of the second Slavic settlement demonstrate the development of Bled up to the 10th century. Some of these remnants are on display at the Bled Castle museum.

The Bishops of Brixen:
German Emperor Henry II, at the request of his wife Kunigunda, donated Bled and thirty neighboring farms to Bishop Albuin of Brixen in 1004. Bled Castle was also given to the Bishops seven years later. These events were a significant milestone in the history of Bled. On behalf of the Bishops, the land was administered by the Bishops’ ministers and subsequently by feudal knights.

In the middle of the 14th century the Bishops of Brixen ceased to directly administer their landholdings at Bled and leased them into the administration of the von Kreighs. Due to breaches in their rights and mishandling of the villeins, the peasantry joined a Slovenia-wide uprising in 1515. In 1558, Bled Castle was leased by a Protestant supporter, Herbert VII. von Auersperg. Leaseholders of the Castle were solely noblemen until the middle of the 18th century, however, subsequently, middle-class citizens also leased the Castle, but rarely as residents. After 800 years of Brixen ownership, Bled became state property by decree of the Vienna Court Commission in 1803. Between 1803 and 1813 it was part of the Illyrian Provinces of the Napoleonic Empire, where after it reverted to the Austrian Emperor, who returned it to the Bishops of Brixen one last time in 1838. The feudal system was abolished ten years later.

Bled underwent many changes in the second half of the 19th century. The typical villages of Gorenjska, which had been individual entities since the Middle Ages, began to merge, incomes decreased and Brixen sold their lands at Bled to the owner of the Jesenice iron works, Viktor Ruard. Thereby the long presence on our soil of the knights-bishops of Brixen in Tyrol ended

Tourism began as pilgrims came to worship St. Mary on the lake island. The Church of the Assumption dates to the 16th and 17th century.

The first true tourists began to visit Bled in the 19th century to benefit from the healthy climate and thermal waters, the curative powers of which had been discovered by the Swiss doctor Arnold Rikli. Guesthouses and hotels sprang up to cater for the needs of visitors. The town, which was said to be the most beautiful thermal resort of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, attracted many of the European aristocracy.

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