For over three decades, Trubar’s Homestead has been the main memorial site dedicated to Primož Trubar. The Homestead includes a memorial house that affords an informative insight into his work and historical importance.
Trubar’s Homestead features a memorial house, a mill, a water-driven sawmill, an inn with a souvenir shop and a gallery, as well as a wooden hayrack. Trubar’s statue, donated to the village of Rašica by sculptor Drago Tršar, is located next to the entrance to the memorial house. Architect Marjan Loboda, who decided on a spiritual rather than ethnographic representation of Trubar, designed the memorial house. In devising a dark and sparsely furnished room, the architect aimed to re-create the conditions and atmosphere of Trubar’s time. An architectural highlight, eye-catching cylinders (columns), were used as showcases for Trubar’s books, which are facsimile copies of originals made by restorer Peter Štaut. The columns represent the idea of Slovenianhood based on a book.
Trubar’s biographical details are featured on the walls, from his birth and studies in Rijeka, Salzburg and Vienna, to his initial career in Trieste and his stay in Ljubljana. The biography also gives prominence to his German exile and to 1550, the year he laid the foundations for the establishment of Slovenian language, protecting it from the common South Slavic language, and introduced the Latin script. Also featured is the time he served as a superintendent for Slovenian Lands in Ljubljana, during which period he sustained various ups and downs, and the trial of his second exile.
The biographical overview is furnished with illustrations of towns and cities that importantly marked Trubar’s life. A special wall is dedicated to a chronological overview of the main stations in Trubar’s life, as well as a map showing the towns in which he stayed. Examples of the first Slovenian printed words and Trubar’s portrait, made by Jakob Lederlein and published in Hišna postila (House Postille, a collection of Sunday and festive gospels), are designed in gold. Trubar’s leading contemporaries are represented in stained-glass windows, the room’s most valuable feature.
