In addition to the nature of the forest and the surrounding rural landscape, the impact of living in harmony with the forest reflects in the nearby villages on a number of buildings of cultural heritage, local handicraft skills, traditions and holidays. Among the first, mainly numerous churches, chapels and ecclesiastical signs and crucifixes near the paths, as well as ethnological monuments, such as preserved centuries-old farmhouses, the Duplje Mansion and memorials of the former governance belong.
Churches, chapels and ecclesiastical signs
St. Peter Parish Church in Naklo
St. Peter Church in Naklo is one of the most high-quality Baroque churches in Upper Carniola. It represents the extreme degree of Baroque dynamism. It was built in 1755 and its plan (blueprint) was designed by the architect Matija Perski. It is equipped with five altars dedicated to St. Peter, the Heart of Jesus, St. Jožef, St. Anton Padovanski and the Mother of God – Queen Mary. The last four are an extremely high-quality work of Valentin Vrbnik from Kranj. The main altar is dedicated to St. Peter. It was made by Janez Vurnik from Radovljica. On the antepedium (below the altar), the relief of the Last Supper is installed, which was carved from the Istrian marble by the sculptor Franc Ksaver Zajec.
St. Nikolaj Branch Church in Strahinj
The Baroque St. Nikolaj Church stands on a small hill in the middle of the village. It was built in 1769 after the model of a slightly older parish church, only the bell tower was added to its predecessor in 1746. It has three altars, dedicated to St. Nikolaj, St. Lenart and St. Barbara. The church keeps two features: the painting of Ecce homo (the Suffering Christ) and the Baroque sacristy cabinet with extremely beautiful sides in the form of a lion's head.
St. Mihael Church in Upper Duplje
St. Mihael Branch Church in Upper Duplje stands at the edge of the dense part of the village at the foot of Udin boršt under Gradišče. The church was built in several stages. It was first mentioned in 1391. This was initially built in the Gothic style and was later made in the Baroque style. The former wooden ceiling of the church nave with vault was replaced, together with the Gothic ribbed vault of the presbytery, with a new Baroque dome vault. From the old church, the walled Gothic window was preserved, and in all probability the keystones of the former Gothic ribbed vault, which are now built outside into the entrance pillars of the former church walls.
The ceiling of the presbytery is decorated with frescoes God Gives the Ten Commandments, Peter's Sermon at Pentecost and Saul's Repentance. On the vault: "With God's and St. Michael's help, the neighbourhood and the benefactors renewed me in 1845. I was painted by Janez Grosar from Duplje in 1849." Janez Gosar was a native; he had a carving workshop in the neighbouring village.
His work is also the altars in St. Vid Parish Church in Lower Duplje. The church has three altars. The main one was built in 1676 and is a beautiful Baroque work, partially renewed in 1889, and is fully restored today. The central image on the altar is a statue of St. Mihael, and on the left and the right sides are the statues of St. Volbenk and St. Ambrož. In the above niche is a statue of the Virgin Mary. On the left side of the church nave is the altar of St. Marjeta. Originally, there was the altar of the St. Trinity, which was replaced in 1696, so there is an altar from 1889 standing in its place now, which is the work of a local Štefan Čadež (1848–1931), who first worked in the Gosar workshop, and later independently. In addition to St. Marjeta, there are two more statues on the altar, the statue of St. Jakob and St. Štefan. The right side altar is dedicated to St. Urban and was originally built in the middle of the 17th century, while the current one is also the work of Čadež from 1889. In the middle, there is the statue of St. Urban, and on the left and the right sides, also the statues of St. King Ludvik and the statue of an unknown bishop.
The original bell tower had stood beside the church, on the site of the present sacristy. When the church was made into Baroque style, it was placed on the west side, so that we enter the church below it. It was built in the years 1761–62. The bell tower has three bells, all being of recent time.
Monuments of rural architectural and living heritage
The Vogvar House
In the middle of the village, a hundred metres north of the Duplje Mansion, the Vogvar House is located in the bank. This is a wooden building with a ground floor residential area and one storey outbuilding. Today, the building is over 200 years old and has remained almost unchanged from the second half of the 18th century.
The ground floor of the residential part of the building is designed in the tradition of wooden country homes with a central entrance hall and black kitchen, with a larger living space (called a house) on the one side and a small room on the other. The house was covered with straw. Today, the residential area is covered with wooden roofing – shingles. In the past, the only light coming into the house was through small windows. One is fully preserved in the entrance hall, and the others were later replaced with larger ones. The interior, which was once made of wood, was later renewed. The wooden construction inside the house was partly preserved only in the entrance hall.
The outbuilding, which is higher and connected to the house, is a one-storey building from the road side with a longitudinal corridor, under which there is the entrance to the basement. The entrance to the floor is from the hillside where the terrain rises to the first floor.
Today, the ethnographic museum with typical equipment of the then living spaces is arranged in the residential part of the building. The largest living space with a rustic stove from the one side and the angle from the other is also equipped with the ark, chest of drawers, a bench beside the stove, old photographs on the walls and small personal belongings of the former inhabitants.
In the black kitchen, which is almost completely preserved, utensils, cutlery and tools used by the housewife in everyday activities are presented. In the corner, there is the characteristic table for mixing dough – mentrga.
In a small room, the former shoemaker's craft with typical tools, machines, aids, semi-finished and finished products of the then shoemakers is presented. The collection is positioned in a way that typical shoemakers' jobs are presented.
By the window, a shoemaker's table for two assistants is placed, one of which was manufacturing men's shoes and the other women's shoes. Beside the table, there was room for an apprentice, who was preparing shoe tread – dreto – in addition to attending to all shoemakers. Moreover, he had to help the housewife, babysit the master's baby if they had one, feed the cattle and especially sweep the workshop in the evening and clean the master's shoes.
There was the workplace of a seamstress who was sewing / stitching the upper parts of shoes. In the middle of the room, there was a table set for the master who was cutting the upper parts of shoes, performing more complex tasks and managing the workshop. There are tools, leather, semi-finished and finished shoes presented on the shelves. A few old photographs of the Duplje shoemakers hang on the wall. Shoemaking was once strongly developed in Duplje, since there was at least one person trained for this profession in almost every house.
In the spring 1996, the locals began preparing the museum in the Vogvar House and opened it for tours in June of the same year. Later, the building was partially restored with the aid of the Municipality of Naklo and the Ministry of Culture. The interior arrangement was left to be done at a later time, especially the rich ethnographic collection. The first arrangement of the Vogvar House and the ethnographic collection was done by the locals themselves with the considerable support of enthusiastic individuals.
Mansion in Duplje
The Mansion in Duplje is an interesting example of the Baroque Renaissance brick storey building with preserved architectural elements from the 16th to the 18th centuries and with Baroque paintings.
The Duplje Mansion is in no way considered one of those important medieval castles where mighty noble families lived and governed. It was only a modest rural residence of the knights who were managing the nearby Udin boršt. Therefore, it is named in the older records also as the Duke's castle. The first document that mentions the Duplje knights is dated between 1205 and 1208. Later, they are mentioned also in the 14th century, while the 15th and 16th centuries were more limited with regard to their preserved sources. More important for the prosperity of the mansion becomes the 17th century, when in 1614 the Duplje Mansion was taken over by the Crabath family. In 1657, Elizabeta Crabath married Wolfgang Theodoric von Posarelli. Thus, the estate passed with a short interruption to the hands of the Posarelli family for the next hundred years. Among the most important owners, we should mention Anton Franc Jožef Posarelli, who was a Member and Chief of States. In 1732, he became a member of the St. Dizma Brotherhood, which united intellectuals of mostly noble lineage. In the memorial book of the above-mentioned brotherhood, we see his coat-of-arms and inscription on its reception. During his stay, Anton Franc Jožef Posarelli restored the mansion and ordered the painting of the facade, which is now restored and gives the building the representative Baroque appearance. What was then the interior of the mansion, the layout and equipment of the rooms, is very carefully presented in the probate inventory, which was drawn up after his death in 1759. Sadly, however, the unstoppable decay of the mansion started after his death. The ownership of the estate changes very quickly, until the mansion became a simple farmhouse in the beginning of the 19th century. It experienced the final collapse by fire in 1832. After that, the building was lowered and reduced by one-third. Over the next 150 years, almost everything giving the building the castle look disappeared.
In these circumstances, the restoration from 1976 to 1985, which the Mauser family had undertaken, required a fairly high degree of ingenuity and compromise between the modestly preserved original and new added style in terms of the former castle architecture. However, the consistency in the realisation of the idea kept the monument preserved in a fairly religious image. The older, left part of the building, is now arranged partly as a museum and partly as a gallery, and in one of the rooms, the permanent display of the mansion's history is presented. In 1985, the building was declared a historic and cultural monument.
Lavička Villa
The Czech pharmacist Bohuslav Lavička (1879–1942) came to Upper Carniola in 1910. In Tržič, he took over the pharmacy and became famous throughout Carniola. He manufactured the medicinal products from natural ingredients, especially herbs and honey. When he was searching for suitable land for the cultivation of medicinal herbs (calendula, cornflower, etc.) in the early thirties, he discovered Strahinj. However, a farmer from Strahinj was not willing to sell him his fields. But when Lavička cured him of epilepsy in a relatively short period of time, he finally agreed in the sale. Lavička bred snakes among the medicinal herbs, set up a laboratory for the manufacture of medicines and a large beehive. Before World War II, he built a villa near his fields, which he wanted to move in after retirement. He placed it in a place from where he could see the Julian Alps, Karavanke Mountains and Kamnik-Savinja Alps. Unfortunately, he did not enjoy the great view for long, as the Germans shot him as a hostage in 1942 in Kovor.
He enriched the Slovenian space with an exceptional pharmacy collection, which he was complementing his entire life. Today, it is in the ownership of the Lek Company. As the only pharmaceutical and medical collection in Slovenia with exceptional cultural, educational and scientific importance, the Lavička collection was declared a cultural monument of national importance at the initiative of Lek. The collection consists of 402 books and 200 articles, incurred during the period from antiquity to the 20th century.
The Lavička Villa was built from 1930 to 1940 in moderate modernism. It is a built one-storey villa with a square floor plan and a gentle four-gable roof. It was designed by the architect Zoran Didek. The villa is situated in the village of Strahinj, near the Biotechnical Centre Naklo and the motorway exit Naklo.
Millstone Museum at Polica
The Millstone Museum at Polica was opened in 2003. It was prepared by the Pavlin-Jagodic family from the Poličar Farm with the aid of the members of the Tourist Association Naklo. The stonecutter family of Carniolan Puhars cut millstones from the conglomerate on the south-western edge of Udin boršt between Polica (the Poličar farm) and the slope of Pečica in Pivka (now the street called the Main Road in Naklo). The ovals of the cut stones allegedly testify to the more than 350-year-long life of the quarry. A robust and compact conglomerate had to be made up of as many white pebbles as possible, because a dark stone may darken white flour. As late as in 1920, millstones were manufactures at Polica by four members of the Puhar family, father Janez and sons Žan, Vinko and Francelj. They were sold across Slovenia and Croatia.
In addition to the millstones, Puhars were also producing "boundary stones" (roadside stones) and sand for road metalling from useless rocks.
In the middle of the 20th century, as a result of the mandatory duty in crop to the country, the farmers started re-ordering millstones in order to keep at least some of the harvest for themselves. Later, when the food situation in Yugoslavia settled, the demand for millstones rapidly declined. Franc Puhar remained in the quarry alone. In 1975, he made his last millstone in his seventies and then retired.
Today, one can no longer hear the hammering at Polica, there are only torn bays of stones, a conglomerate rock and a unique museum in Europe, which is worth visiting. Authentic tools and visual material were donated to the museum by the children of the last stonemason, the sons Andrej and Franci, as well as daughters Mara and Jožica.
Museum visits are possible by agreement, prior reservations are required at the Poličar Farm on the following telephone number: 04 257 12 92.
Kranj–Naklo–Tržič railway and museum locomotive
The Kranj–Naklo–Tržič railway and museum locomotive are closely connected. Naklo got a railway link to Kranj on July 5, 1908. The track continued through Duplje and Križe to Tržič. For decades, it had been advocated for it by the Tržič economists Dr. Karel Born, the owner of a sawmill and extensive forests from Puterhof (today Jelendol), Andrej Gassner and Edmund Glanzmann, co-owners of a cotton spinning and weaving mill, Peter Kozina, owner of a shoe company (today Peko), and the Mayor of Tržič Karel Mally. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Tržič was in the fourth place among the Slovenian cities according to its industrial development. The companies in the Tržič basin were strongly limited by poor road connections. With the opening of the railway track, their situation improved, significantly.
In 1936, a private limited company Kranj–Tržič Local Railway sold the tracks to the country of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The track was built for low-speed trains and small axial loads. Due to lack of modernisation and competition in road transport, as well as traffic reduction and much-needed track renovation, the renewal was stopped in 1966.
The route between Tržič and Naklo was demolished the same year and intended the part to Kranj for freight transport. It was used by the following companies: Agricultural Cooperative Naklo, Forest Management, Surovina and Sava from Kranj, which had transhipped various loads in Naklo: wood, potatoes, fertilisers, scrap metal, glass, coal and pigs for the Butchers company.
Several industrial tracks were connected to the railway, i.e., into the Legat Gravel Pit (now the asphalt plant), the gravel pit at Polica (today Gradbinec GIP, Ltd.). In the early 1980s, the industrial tracks were upgraded by the commercial companies Živila (now Mercator) and Merkur, and in 2009, the Dinos Company.
Occasionally, a museum train comes to Naklo.
Monument to Dr. Gregor Voglar
For the 350th anniversary of the birth of Doctor Gregor Voglar (Dr. Gregorius Carbonarius von Wiesenegg) (1651–1717), a fountain with a monument was set up in 2002 in the middle of Naklo. The monument is dedicated to probably the most important inhabitant of Naklo, who served in Russia from 1689 to 1715, also as a long-time personal physician of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. In his will, he did not forget his native village and left it a monetary present for the reconstruction of the waterworks and placement of troughs in the middle of the village.
The monument was made by the sculptor Stane Kolman from Zgoče near Begunje, and the fountain by the Marmor Company from Hotavlje.
