members of one of the strictest Catholic monastic orders , made it their home in the Middle Ages .
The earliest evidence of Bistra goes back to the Roman period ; Roman stonework and two tombstones which probably originate from the graves in Nauportus . 2 Taking its name from the karstic springs of the Bistra river , the settlement reached its peak in the time of the Carthusian monastery . The charterhouse was founded between 1255 and 1260 by the Carinthian Duke 3 , Bernard Spanheim and his son Ulrich III who secured its existence through a charter .
In its six hundred years , the Bistra monastery experienced its fair share of ups and downs and was rebuilt on several occasions . It was nearly destroyed by two large fires in the 14th and fortified in the defense against Turkish incursions in the 16th centuries . In Baroque , the monastery saw intensive reconstructions and additions . Built in this period , St . Joseph Chapel is lavishly decorated with stucco work and late 18th century frescoes .
Fresco decoration was executed by the Ljubljana painter Anton Cebej . Photo : Jaka Blasutto .
Copperplate of the Bistra monastery , J . V . Valvasor , A Contemporary Topography of the Duchy of Carniola , 1679 .
In the late 17th century , Janez Vajkard Valvasor 4 wrote in his magnum opus The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola : “ The monks seem to have chosen this valley for their house , for a silent home in solitude where they could , alone and undisturbed , without any company , enjoy comforting views of this enchanting vale so distant from the hustle and buzzle of other populated areas ; there are no villages in the vicinity .”
As a man of the Enlightenment , Emperor Joseph II5 banned several contemplative monastic orders in 1782 , including the Carthusians . Monks left the monastery , the monastic church and monk cells along the great cloister were demolished . Besides St . Joseph Chapel , a little Gothic cloister with elaborate stonework and impressive Baroque buildings with arcades survived of the original structure .
2 Originally a settlement of the Celtic tribe of the Taurisci , Nauportus ( modern Vrhnika , four kilometers from Bistra ) was controlled by the Romans from the late 2nd or the early 1st century BC . It was located on the east-west transit route between Italy and the Middle Danube area . 3 The Duchy of Carinthia covered the territory of southern Austria and parts of northern Slovenia . It was a State of the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806 , though from 1335 it was ruled within the Austrian dominions of the Habsburg dynasty . Carinthia remained a crown land of Austria-Hungary until 1918 . 4 Born in the town of Ljubljana , Valvasor , in German Johann Weikhard Freiherr von Valvasor ( 1641 – 1693 ), was a natural historian , a polymath and a pioneer of study of karst phenomena . In 1687 , his extensive treatise on the intermittent Lake Cerknica won him a Fellowship of the London Royal Society . 5 Joseph II ( 1741 – 1790 ) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1780 until his death . The eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband , Emperor Francis I , Joseph was one of the three great Enlightenment monarchs . His reforms were a conscious attempt to reorder the rule of his lands on the idea of the unitary state , with a centralized government , rational and mostly secular society , with greater degrees of equality and freedom .
73