Sveti Florijan Statue, Ptuj

A statue on the City square in Ptuj. st. Florian is usually the patron of firefighters and one can see a statue or a fresco of it on almost every firefighter station in Slovenia. The city of Ptuj was "plagued" by many large fires in 1744, so in 1745 they put up this statue as to help prayers to protect the city from more fires. An "interesting" consequence of all those fires was that the time and costs of rebuilding the city were added to the decision whether the Wien - Trieste railway would pass through Maribor or Ptuj. Maribor was at that time not any more important than Ptuj, but the route through Maribor was economically more appropriate, and adding these reasons - Ptuj lost. That had quite important consequences for Maribor, it developed much faster, and Ptuj fell behind. Well, nowadays, from the tourist point of view, Ptuj is, because of it's castle, old town part, and local traditions like "Kurentovanje", at least as if not more important than Maribor.