Šmartno ob Paki, high vineyards between three valleys

The vineyard cottages, Šmartno’s real draw

The municipality presents three zidanice, the local name for vineyard cottages with a cellar. The Mlinarjeva is a Renaissance building from the early 1500s, with frescoes on the façade and window frames each cut from one block of stone. Tradition has it that the lords collected their wine tithe there and later used it as a lock-up, until the peasants smashed it up in anger.

The Bednikova has the date 1748 cut into a beam. It’s L-shaped, with the cellar dug into the slope and timber living quarters on top, including a room for the tenants, the owner’s parlour and the press room, plus baroque windows with wrought-iron grilles. The Špančeva, from 1818, keeps a massive oak press dated 1791 and, in its vineyard, vines that are centuries old. My favourite is the Bednikova, for how clearly it shows the way vineyard families lived.

Is Gora Oljka worth the climb?

I think so. It’s an isolated karst hill, 733 m high, above the village, crowned by the 18th-century pilgrimage Church of the Holy Cross, whose twin towers are visible from far off. The name comes from the painting of Jesus on the Mount of Olives on its high altar. Just below the summit there’s a mountain hut. From Šmartno you go up via Podgora or Rečica ob Paki, and on the first Sunday in May the hilltop holds the Šmarska nedelja with Mass.

An afternoon from Velenje

Šmartno is a few minutes from Velenje and its coal mining museum. To the west you enter the upper valley through Mozirje and Rečica ob Savinji, and to the south you drop down to Žalec and hop country.

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St Martin’s and other curiosities

St Martin’s Church, which gives the village its name, is recorded in 1262. It’s Gothic, was remodelled in late baroque style in the mid-18th century and keeps frescoes painted in the early 15th century under its tower. At Rečica ob Paki stands the villa Carl Josef Bayer had built in 1879, the chemist who in 1887 patented the basis of the industrial alumina process, and where he lived until 1904. By the station, the 1914 Italian steam locomotive nicknamed Gospodična recalls the Savinja railway, opened in 1891.

A small village between valleys

According to SURS, the village has 641 residents and the municipality 3,436 on 1 January 2026, in ten settlements and just 18.1 km². It sits where the Paka river runs out into the Lower Savinja Valley, with the Upper Savinja on one side and the Šalek Valley on the other. The tourist board, on its Upper Savinja page, credits it with Slovenia’s highest vineyards.

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