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Mestna občina Celje

Area:	94,9 km²
Population  - males  - females	48.081 23.114 24.967
Average age:	40,49 let
Residential areas:  - households:  - families:	27,52 m²/osebo 18.256 13.938
Working active:  - unemployed:	23.553 4.475
Average monthly salary (avgust 2003):  - gross:  - net:	252.091 SIT 158.782 SIT
College/university students:	1.823
Source: Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, census of 2002.

Celje (help·info) (German: Cilli; Hungarian: Cille) is the third largest city in Slovenia and a characteristic Central European town. It is a regional center in Lower Styria and is the administrative seat of the municipality of the same name. Celje is located under the Upper Celje Castle (407 m) at the confluence of the rivers Savinja, Ložnica, and Voglajna (with its tributary Hudinja) in the lowest part of the Savinja Valley. It is 241 m mean above sea level (MSL).

Escutcheon of Ulrich II. of Celje

The escutcheon of Celje originates from the Counts of Celje.

The coat-of-arms of Celje was selected for the national arms immediately after World War I in 1918, when Slovenia together formed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with Croatia and Serbia. A similar coat of arms was integrated into the Slovenian national arms in 1991.

Celje southwards on the picture from 1441. The river Voglajna on the left flows into the river Savinja, which streams then to its outfall to the river Sava. On the right of the Savinja an island can be seen; today a ward there is called the Otok ("Island").

The first urban settlement in the area of Celje appeared in the Hallstatt era. The settlement was known in the Celtic times as Kelea; Celts coined money in the region. After being made part part of the Roman Empire, it became known as Civitas Celeia. It received municipal rights in 46 AD under the name municipium Claudia Celeia during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius (41-54). Written records allege it was rich and densely populated, secured with the walls and towers, full of multi-story marble palaces, wide squares, and streets. It was called Troia secunda, or the second or small Troy. A Roman road through Celeia led from Aquileia (Oglej) to Pannonia. Celeia soon became one of the most flourishing Roman colonies, and possessed numerous great buildings, of which the temple of Mars was famous throughout the whole empire. Celeia was incorporated with Aquileia ca. 320 under Roman Emperor Constantine I (272-337).

The city was razed by Slavic tribes during the Migration period of the 5th and 6th century, but was rebuilt in the Early Middle Ages. The first mention of Celje in the Middle Ages was under the name of Cylie in Admont's Chronicle, which was written between the years 1122 and 1137.

The town was the seat of the Counts of Celje from 1341–1456. It acquired market-town status in the first half of the 14th century and town privileges from Count Frederick II (Friderik II) on April 11, 1451.

After the Counts of Celje died out in 1456, the region was inherited by the Habsburgs of Austria and administered by the Duchy of Styria. The city walls and defensive moat were built in 1473. Many local nobles converted to Protestantism during the Protestant Reformation, but the region was converted back to Roman Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation. Celje became part of the Habsburgs' Austrian Empire in its creation during the Napoleonic Wars. After the defeat of Austria in the Austro-Prussian War, the town became part of Austria-Hungary in 1867.

The first train of the Vienna-Trieste railway line came to Celje on April 27, 1846. In 1895 Celje gymnasium, established in 1808, started to have lesson in Slovene language. In the end of the 19th century and in the early 1900s Celje was a strong center of German nationalism against Slovenes. A symbol of this remains in Celje Hall (Slovenian: Celjski dom, formerly called the German House (German: Deutsches Haus), built in 1907. At this time, Celje was also known as Celle. The Narodni dom (the National Hall) was built in 1896, which hosts the seat of a township today. In 1900 Celje had 6,743 citizens. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica listed the town with the German name Cilli. The first telephone in the city was mounted in 1902 and the city received electric power in 1913.

Celje in 1938.

Slovenian and German ethnic nationalism increased during the 19th and early 20th centuries. With the fall of Austria-Hungary in 1918 as a result of World War I, Celje became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Celje was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. Nazis committed many war crimes against civilians at a prison called the Stari pisker ("old pot") and in the surroundings such as Frankolovo, where many Slovenian patriots were hanged from trees. A prisoner's last letters from Stari pisker were published as a book after the war. Men of the Gestapo came to Celje on April 16, 1941 and were followed three days later by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who inspected Stari pisker.

The toll of the war was terrible. The city (including nearby towns) had a pre-war population of 20,000 and lost 575 people during the war, mostly between the ages of 20 and 30. More than 1,500 people were deported to Serbia or into the interior of the German Third Reich. Around 300 people were interned and around 1,000 people imprisoned in Celje's prisons. An unknown number of citizens were forcibly mobilized in the German army. Around 600 "stolen children" were taken to Germany for Germanization. A monument in Celje entitled Vojna in mir ("War and Peace") commemorates the World War II era.

Monument Vojna in mir ("War and Peace").

After the end of the war, the remaining German-speaking portion of the populace was expelled. The new communist government took advantage of existing anti-tank trenches, dug around Celje by the retreating German army, by using them as mass graves. They were filled with Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian soldiers who had collaborated with the Germans, as well as civilians who had opposed the national liberation front and Communist movement during the war; the purpose was to physically eliminate any potential political opposition. On the pretext of collaboration with the enemy, the Yugoslav National Army executed more than 30,000 - mostly Croat and Slovenian - prisoners in the Celje area, without any judicial process. The bodies were buried in hidden mass graves in Celje; the exact number is still not known. At the concentration camp at Teharje, some 5,000 Slovenians, hundreds of them still minors, were murdered within two months after the end of the war, again without trial. After the concentration camp was abolished in 1950, the local authorities established a huge industrial dump on the gravesite, concealing the evidence under a vast hill of toxic waste. In 1991, when discussing facts pertaining to the massacre was no longer taboo, the Slovenian government decided to build a memorial to the victims of Teharje.

Celje became part of independent Slovenia after the Ten-Day War in 1991. On April 7, 2006 Celje became the seat of the new Diocese of Celje, which was created by Pope Benedict XVI as a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Maribor. Tourist sights of the town include a Minorite monastery founded in 1241 and a palace from the 16th century.

An old postcard of the railway station and the Celjski dom on the right.

The urban municipality is divided into 39 settlements (naselja):

The Celjski dom.

The settlement Celje has 10 districts (mestne četrti) and the municipality 9 local communities (krajevne skupnosti):

Celje has 47,660 citizens as of 2002:

• men: 22,744,
• women: 24,816,
• households: 18,410;
• mean number of household members: 2,6;
• apartments: 19,578;
• buildings with apartments: 8,090.

The Celje annual municipal festival is held on April 11.

Celje does not have its own university, although some college-level education has been established in the city for a while. The Faculty of Logistics, formally part of the University of Maribor, was established in Celje in 2005. In 2006 Tehnopolis Celje was established, a technological center with an international university. The project will be completed in 2013.

The current mayor of Celje is Bojan Šrot, elected for the second time in 2006.

Postal number: SI-3000 (from 1991). (Old one: 63000 (between 1945-1991)).

• The Celje region is frequently shaken by minor earthquakes.
• In the local colloquial Slovenian dialect, Celje is called Cjele or Cele, giving it a special modulation, spoken mainly by its citizens.

Celje is twinned with the following towns:

Grevenbroich	Germany
Singen	Germany	(since 1989)

• Hermann II of Celje (1365-1435), Count of Celje
• Anna of Celje (1381-1416), second wife of King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland
• Barbara of Celje (1390/1395-1451), second wife of Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
• Ulrich II of Celje (1406-1456), Count of Celje
• Thomas Berlower (Thomas of Cilli (1421-1496), Bishop of Konstanz ("Constance") 1491-1496
• Vatroslav Oblak (1864-1896), Slavicist
• Josip Tominšek (1872-1954), Slavicist and mountaineer
• Cvetko Golar (1879-1965), poet and author
• Vladimir Levstik (1886-1957), author and translator
• August Friderik Seebacher (1887-1940), painter and graphic artist
• Alma Maksimiljana Karlin (1889-1950), traveller, author, poet, and collector
• Anica Černej (1900-1944), poet, author, and schoolmistress
• Thea Gammelin (1906-1988), painter
• Darinka Pavletič-Lorenčak (born 1924), painter and graphic artist, poet, honorary citizen of Celje
• Andrej Hieng (born 1925), author
• Lojze Rozman (1930-1997), actor
• Janez Drozg (1933-2005), film director
• Emerik Bernard (born 1937), painter
• Janez K. Lapajne (born 1937), geophysicist and seismologist
• Janez Drnovšek (born 1950), politician, statesman, and third president of Slovenia
• Bina Štampe Žmavc (born 1953), author
• Jelko Kacin (born 1955), politician
• Oto Pestner (born 1956), musician and singer
• Romana Jordan Cizelj (born 1966), physicist and politician
• Janez Lapajne (born 1967), film director
• Jolanda Čeplak (born 1976), athlete
• Urška Žolnir (born 1981), judoist
• Beno Udrih (born 1982), basketball player
• Vita Mavrič, chanteuse and singer
• Janko Orožen, historian
• Andreja Rihter, minister of culture of Slovenia

Celje in 2004 - a view from the Upper Celje castle.	Southeastern Vodni stolp ("Water tower").	The Upper Celje Castle, viewed from the banks of river Savinja in Pečovnik toward northeast.	Celje in 2004 - a view from Frederick's tower of the Upper Celje castle towards the northwest.
Railway station today.

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Celje

• Official website (Slovenian)
• Celje municipal flag
• Teharje monument photos (Slovenian)

Slovenia | Slovenian regions
Urban municipalities: Celje | Koper | Kranj | Ljubljana | Maribor | Murska Sobota
Nova Gorica | Novo Mesto | Ptuj | Slovenj Gradec | Velenje

Coordinates: 46°14′09″N, 15°16′03″E