Noble heraldry in Slovenia

About the project

The goal of the collection is to gather and present the largest possible number of coats of arms belonging to former noble families that can still be found in Slovenia today. The vast majority are carved stone coats of arms displayed on the façades of various buildings, tombstones, and memorial plaques, and some were also used as identification elements in portraits or as decorative elements gracing utilitarian objects. Many are currently unknown or misidentified after the knowledge about them has been lost due to the long neglect of research on the nobility in Slovenia. One of the main objectives is therefore to correctly identify individual noble coats of arms. The collection is structured in a way that the description of each coat of arms includes information regarding its location (place, building, and object), followed by a detailed presentation of the arms and the circumstances under which they were created. In addition, the website offers a simultaneous display of all coats of arms belonging to the same noble family in different locations. The presentations are also provided in English. Serving as a corpus of in situ Slovenian noble heraldry, the collection is thus envisaged to be of particular interest to Slovenian public, while its English version may also benefit users worldwide.