Historic Maps
1954 Touristic Map
Interactive Map - use +/- or mouse wheel to zoom
Interactive Map - Use fingers to zoom
The above navigable image is a 1954 touristic map depicting Yugoslavia. Employing small animated icons, the map shows some of the most significant adventure, heritage and cultural offerings across the country. The year 1954 is very young in the tourism development of Yugoslavia, however, despite this fact, it is clear that great effort has already been put forward toward the national goal of expanding touristic offerings and destinations. On this map, we see not only cultural sites like castles and churches (as well as some of the most famous buildings in the country, but also skiing, water sports, spa resorts, etc. Furthermore, the legend of this map is translated into English, French and German (in addition to Serbo-Croatian), indicating the efforts being put forward to appeal to international tourists around the world. This map was created by Slovenian cartographer and architect Vlasto Kopač and was published by the Yugoslav Tourist Bureau in Ljubljana.
More about the artist Vlasto Kopač
Architect Vlasto Kopač was born in the family of a Slovenian academic painter. He inherited the gift of drawing and design from his father. In 1934, he enrolled in architecture at the University of Ljubljana and was employed as a draftsman by Jože Plečnik from 1937 to 1940. He was sentenced to 4 months in prison in 1936 for communist propaganda. From 1938 he was a member of the KPS. He continued his work and studies with Plečnik, for whom he drew cemetery buildings in Žale and Tržnica. In October 1943 he was arrested by the Home Guard political police and from January 1944 he was an inmate in Dachau. He worked in a bookbinding workshop and secretly drew. After the end of the war, he returned to Slovenia from the camp in mid-June 1945. He became the first president of the Mountaineering Association of Slovenia. He was already active as a mountaineer before 1941. He is credited with the preparation and publication of the first two post-war mountain maps. He also designed a monument to fallen mountaineers in Kamniška Bistrica. In the fall of 1947, the new rulers imprisoned him and harshly interrogated him, accusing him of collaborating with Axis powers while imprisoned at Dachau. In August 1948, he was sentenced to death during the notorious "Dachau Trials", but then pardoned to instead serve 20 years of imprisonment with forced labor.
However, despite this sentence, he was released on parole in April 1952, and then ultimately had his reputation rehabilitated only in 1971. After a few years, he got a job at the monument service in Ljubljana. From 1963 to 1969, he was the director of the Intermunicipal Institute for Monument Protection in Ljubljana. The institution then stretched from Bela krajina to the edges of Gorenjska. He participated in the renovation of many castles. He also planned the white commemorative prisms of the Path along the wire. He worked with the monument service even after his retirement. He advised on the renovation of Plečnik's Žal and Tržnice, which he knew very well as Plečnik's assistant.
Kopač, a great lover of the mountains, especially the Velika planina, already in 1934 became one of the first tenants of the shepherd's hut on the Velika planina. After the war, he lobbied for the professional arrangement of Velika Planina, so that only it could preserve its original appearance, and he planned the shape of the typical apartments, which are still a landmark of Velika and Mala Planina today. A small commemorative plaque was dedicated to him next to the decorated apartment.