Send Gift Baskets to Ptuj, Slovenia

Ptuj is known to be the oldest recorded town in Slovenia. Evidence suggests that the area was settled in the Stone Age, and Celts settled the site in the Late Iron Age. 

Ancient Rome controlled the settlement as part of the Pannonian province by the 1st century B.C. In 69 AD, Vespasian was elected Roman Emperor by the Danubian legions in Ptuj, and the city of Ptuj was first mentioned in writing that year. A legionary fortress or castrum was found at Poetovium, where Legio XIII Gemina‘s base camp was. Colonia Ulpia Traiana Poetovio was named in 103 by Emperor Trajan, who granted the settlement city status. Victorinus, a patristic writer, was Bishop of Poetovio before his martyrdom. Constantius Gallus was stripped of his imperial robe and arrested at Poetovio before he was executed in Pola in 354 (Amm. Marc. Hist. XIV). In 388, Theodosius I defeated Maximus, the usurper at Poetovio.

During the year 570, the city was occupied by Slavic and Eurasian Avar tribes. After the fall of the Avar state at the end of the 8th century, Ptuj became part of the Frankish Empire. A Slavic Balaton Principality called Pribina and Kocelj controlled it between 840 and 874. During 874-890, Ptuj gradually came under the influence of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, which had both spiritual and temporal control over the settlement; in 1376, city rights were granted, resulting in a rapid economic expansion.