Over Magdalensberg mountain in a camper van : Sicily to Ukraine part 58

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• published: 02 Dec 2013
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SEE MY MOTORHOME GROUP ON FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/motorhomefulltime I continue on the Austrian B69, which is a favourite road for bikers, occasionally getting the chance to admire the wonderful views of the Karawanken mountain range in Austria and Slovenia before continuing up the mountain. En route I stopped at a bikers bar but unable to see anything to film because of the tree cover I continue northwards. As you can see in this film, getting down the mountain is much quicker than getting up in a camper van! The GPS co-ordinates I have given on the map on you tube are correct. Magdalensburg is a community of around forty mountain villages. It's name comes from the mountain which once held a settlement, possibly the the royal capital of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum. The excavations that have been going on for a century now have, however, so far not brought to light any traces of the Celtic town. This might be due to the fact that the excavations were focussed on the spectacular centre of the settlement, which was obviously completely "upgraded" by the Romans from about 50BCE onwards, before they started on building the municipium of Virunum, the new capital of the Roman Province of Noricum at the foot of the mountain. The Celtic settlement's name is still unknown. For a while it was assumed to be the Noreia of ancient sources, then this idea was rejected, and now the archaeologists in charge of the excavations think that the Roman city of Virunum had probably been given the name of its Celtic hilltop predecessor. The most spectacular find was made as early as 1502: a perfect statue of a young man. The beautiful "Jüngling vom Helenenberg", was named after the mountain's name at that time which was Helenenberg, was a European sensation and as the finest example of Greek sculpturing in the monarchy has found its way into the Vienna Museum of Art. For tourism's sake the young man was renamed "Jüngling vom Magdalensberg" and copies of the statue can now be seen both in the Magdalensberg museum and in Klagenfurt. The "original" was then identified as a Roman copy of a Greek original of the 5th century BCE, recently, however, it turned out to be an early Renaissance copy of an original Roman copy of the Greek original both of which had gone lost, yet their beauty has been preserved. According to Barry Cunliffe, Noricum was from the time of the Roman Republic a friendly ally of Rome. Trade between the two states was intense, particularly from Noricum's iron, gold, and agricultural produce. "The adjacent trading centre of Magdalensberg consisted of two elements, a native oppidum on the summit of the mountain and a Roman trading colony below. The oppidum was the principal administrative centre of the kingdom and the residence of the royal Noricum family, and as such provided a natural focus for Roman merchants. The Roman colony developed on a south-facing terrace below the oppidum. The earliest buildings were of timber and can be dated to c.100BCE but by 30BCE the traders' houses were built in stone and were decorated with murals depicting classical mythological scenes painted by immigrant Roman artists. The focus of the colony was a large open forum where the commercial transactions would have been carried out. The Roman merchants who lived and worked here were representatives of the great business houses, mainly from Aquileia, and like all traders in foreign lands they surrounded themselves with the outward and visible signs of their own culture. The scale of the trade with Rome was considerable and acted as a spur to local production; it also introduced the Roman lifestyle to the natives who, over the decades, increasingly embraced Roman luxuries and Roman manners" (Cunliffe, 2001). Numerous settlements emanate from the pre-feudal Slavic social structure. They were the electors of the prince of the State of Carantania, based in the village of Karnburg (Slovenian: Krnski grad) in the valley of Zollfeld. Allegedly, Thomas Jefferson based the United States Constitution on how these people governed themselves. The central mountain hill was also taken over by Slavs or Carantanians as a religious centre and pilgrimages came here in pre-christian times. The three headed stone of Magdalensberg is an example of early Slavic art from the 8th. to the middle of the 9th Century that represents the process of introducing the Slavic god Triglav (the three headed god), into Christian tradition locally. Numerous vestiges of Slovenian cultural history are still present, though the language became clearly a minority language. However, it is still artistically creative.