»How much for those potatoes, mam?«

The beat of the Ljubljana open-air marketplace in Hribar's time

Abstract

Using archival sources, the author depicts the open-air marketplace in Ljubljana from 1900-1910. When Ivan Hribar was Mayor of the city of Ljubljana, the open-air marketplace was moved to the site where the Lyceum Theatre once stood. It was during this time also that the thought of building a covered marketplace began to seem more viable and the plans for it were elaborated. In 1908 new ordinances governing trade in the open-air marketplace were passed, as the old regulations were becoming obsolete. The article also discusses the system and role of supervision of the marketplace - a topic indivisible from its everyday activities. This is followed by a more detailed account of the produce on sale at that time at the "Ljubljanska tržnica" or open-air marketplace and the author concludes by shedding some light on the problem of growing prices which began to make itself felt in that decade, and by which above all the lower and working classes were hit the hardest.