Atop a pier above the Sava, the town development began in the thirteenth century, reaching its climax in the sixteenth century. The former design of the town, with administrative buildings on one side of the square and crafts and trade buildings on the other, can still be seen today. During the passage from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, Radovljica’s walls featured as many as 16 defence towers and a moat.
The town's moat, which was subsequently partly narrowed and built over, is the only preserved town moat in Slovenia and can be visited at the western end of the Old Town.
A series of picturesque
Renaissance and
Gothic town house façades can be viewed on the southern edge of the square. The overhangs on the upper floors, as well as the small windows and house portals made from
green tuff, a volcanic rock extracted from the nearby Peračica Quarry, are particularly characteristic of these façades.
A special place among these houses belongs to the sixteenth century
Šivec House, with its front façade dominated by a fresco portraying a Good Samaritan. It is today one of the
best-preserved examples of sixteenth century Slovene town architecture.
Other houses of interest include
Mali House —its‘shame bench’ served as the town’s stocks; there is also
Vidic House, with its projecting corner bowfront and Renaissance façade painting,
Lectar House which boasts an
inn and a
gingerbread museum,
Magušar House with its arcaded Gothic courtyard and
pottery workshop, and some other buildings with frescoes and decorations.
The mighty
Radovljica Mansion dominates as much as one third of the square and it is, without doubt, the queen of Radovljica’s architecture. It features a Baroque façade with an opulent entrance portal and stucco-work portraits and grotesque masks; the interior is dominated by a double staircase and the exquisite Baroque Hall. The mansion houses the world-renowned
Museum of Apiculture and the
Municipal Museum of Radovljica with its permanent exhibition entitled ‘
Anton Tomaž Linhart (1756–1795): Now I am thinking about how to become famous’. In the seventeenth century, a park belonging to the Radovljica Mansion was built.
The pier atop which Radovljica’s Old Town is situated ends with a square in front of the
Church of St Peter, which is a typical example of a Gothic three-nave town church. Next to the church is a
presbytery with a sixteenth century arcadedcourtyard. On the northern side of the presbytery is a
Gothic tavern, another speciality of Radovljica’s Old Town. The oldest part of town walls feature remnants of the onetime defence towers; beneath one of these (the Vestry Tower), a German bunker situated behind the church was built during World War II. The bunker has been arranged as the
Chapel of St Edith Stein.