Carniola

Carniola
Historical region
Landscape of Lower Carniola in Slepšek
1791 map of Carniola
Country	Slovenia
Elevation	400 m (1,300 ft)

Traditional regions of Slovenia

1 Slovenian Littoral; Carniola: 2a Upper 2b Inner, 2c Lower 3 Carinthia; 4 Styria; 5 Prekmurje

Carniola (Slovene, Croatian: Kranjska;German: Krain; Italian: Carniola; Hungarian: Krajna) was a historical region that comprised parts of present-day Slovenia. Although as a whole it does not exist anymore, Slovenes living within the former borders of the region still tend to identify with its traditional parts Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola (with the sub-part of White Carniola), and to a lesser degree with Inner Carniola. In 1991, 47% of the population of Slovenia lived within the borders of the former Duchy of Carniola.

A state of the Holy Roman Empire in the Austrian Circle and a duchy in the hereditary possession of the Habsburgs, later part of the Austrian Empire and of Austria-Hungary, the region was a crown land from 1849, when it was also subdivided into Upper Carniola, Lower Carniola, and Inner Carniola, until 1918. Its capital was originally Krainburg, for a short period Stein, and from the second half of the 13th century, Laibach or Ljubljana. Nowadays, its territory (in the extent at its dissolution) is almost entirely located in Slovenia, except for a small part in the northwest Italy, around Fusine in Valromana. Carniola in its final form, established in 1815, encompassed 9,904 km² (3,824 sq mi). In 1914, before the beginning of World War I, it had a population of slightly under 530,000 inhabitants.