A flaw of being a woman busted with a bust

Walking through a capital, any capital, one stumbles upon dozens of monuments, sculptures, portrait reliefs, memorial plaques, and all other kinds of memorials depicting and praising the given city’s people from the past. It is usually not hard to find a statue of a writer, poet, painter, politician, scientist, pop star or even a revolutionary when wanting to find one.

Hell, one can even visit the city’s cemetery to look at, or even better, to touch a marble being engraved with the name of someone whose activities and achievements left an eternal mark not just on the city where the person lived or worked, but also a mark in our cultural memory.

However, this is rarely so when that particular historical person has a flaw in its character. And it’s a small flaw, but so more sharp one. It is the flaw of being a woman. Indeed, rarely walking through a capital, any capital, a visitor will stumble upon an abundance of memorials dedicated to important and ground-breaking women from history. If still doubting, then you should go see a special tour in Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana – Ljubljana Feminist Tour.

Ljubljana is far and wide known as a city flourishing in various colours of creativity and arts. As an Open City that it is, Ljubljana is a welcoming harbour for alternative and progressive activities. Thus, it is of no surprise that Ljubljana has been for the last year one of the rare world’s capitals, if not even the only one, that through a regular daily tour courageously embraces its blemish of being a capital with very little memory of the city’s women from the past.

Ljubljana Feminist Tour straight-forwardly points to the fact of the lack of memorials dedicated to women who shaped and co-created Ljubljana’s history. It takes visitors back and forth between historical moments in which particular women were active and changed history for good.

Prepared and guided by Ljubljana Urban Tours, the Ljubljana Feminist Tour, showcases iconic female artists, urban architects, political leaders, scientists, nuns, witches, and even Women’s Anti-Fascist Front. The tour is spiced with a pinch of queer and non-binary interpretations and takes to different historical periods of struggles for women’s rights, as well as present-day gender issues in Slovenian society. The tour does not only offer an educational time that shocks (do you know the real story behind the symbol of Europa?), but also causes a lot of laughter and amazement (do you know how the only city centre’s street named after a woman looks like?).

The tour offers a two-hour experience that irreversibly adds a value to any congress guest’s visit to Ljubljana. Recently, for example, a granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Laura Roosevelt, while in Ljubljana on a meeting, visited the tour and was so astounded that she had started thinking of preparing her own Feminist Tour in her own city.

So, if the granddaughter of one of the most important women in all history, Eleanor Roosevelt, whose bust will Ljubljana soon erect also on the ground of the lack of women memorials that the Ljubljana Feminist Tour has brought up to light, then one can be sure to get a great experience, either as an incentive or as an additional programme accompanying congresses, conferences, and seminars.

Ljubljana has once again shown its heart of a wide-open city. The capital being a step ahead when it comes to progressive perspectives of its lifestyle, history, and culture. This time, Ljubljana acknowledges its important women with a tour. Next time it will with another bust.