Hrastnik, coal, glass and chemicals in Zasavje's narrowest valley

What Hrastnik is, a mining valley

Hrastnik has 4,667 residents, and the municipality 8,755 across 19 settlements and 58.5 km², the smallest in Zasavje, according to SURS. The municipality says about 600 people lived in the area in the 14th century and that the first census, in 1869, counted 3,847. Growth came with the mine and the railway, whose first train passed through in 1849, when the mine had already been working since 1822. The name Hrastnik only took hold in 1929; before then the centre of the valley was called Sv. Lenart.

In 1860 the two factories that still define the town arrived. Edvard J. Heider moved the glassworks from Jurklošter, because there was coal here for the furnaces, and Franc Gossleth brought the chemical works from Trieste. Both still occupy the southern end of the valley, and the glassworks now sells upmarket glassware under its own brand.

What to see, the museum and the Mlakar flat

The museum occupies a yellow-orange former German school of 1907, on the road from the centre to the chemical works. It became a museum in 1977 and now holds collections on the Podkraj archaeological site, the local gentry, the glassworks, the chemical works, schooling in Zasavje and the puppets of a local troupe. There is no charge, and the doors are open on weekdays from eight until two.

In the old mining colony at Resnica, the Mlakar flat has recreated a miner’s home since 1980, with two rooms and objects of the period. Communists met here between 1932 and 1941, and it was declared a monument in 2007. At Šavna Peč, a restored granary has held an ethnological collection and works by the translator Anton Sovre since 2012.

St Barbara and the 1934 strike

St Barbara is the patron saint of Hrastnik’s miners, and one of the shafts is named after her, with a chapel at its entrance. The miners’ greeting, «Srečno», good luck, comes from that life of constant danger. The municipal holiday on 3 July recalls the hunger strike the miners began on that day in 1934 against low pay and weeks of three or four working days, which lasted until the 5th.

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Dol, Kopitnik and getting there

About two kilometres away lies Dol pri Hrastniku, with 1,373 people according to SURS, which appears as Tal in a 13th-century land register and grew up around the church of St James. The municipality has Natura 2000 areas, isolated rock towers such as the Jelenove skale, the Kovška luknja cave, the Bajdetov graben ravine with its waterfalls and Kopitnik, rich in Illyrian flora with some Alpine species and proposed as a landscape park.

Hrastnik lies between Trbovlje and Zidani Most, and the Sava valley trains stop at its station. It is best combined with its neighbours on a tour of the region, starting from Zagorje ob Savi or Litija.

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