Monument to the victims of all wars in Ljubljana: Tradi-tion, its symbolic form and the perception of the community

Abstract

After an overview of the elementary theoretical considerations that describe how users build their image of an urban object, we allude to the tradition of building monuments during the socialist era, which is part of recent history and rich in examples of strong symbolism. In the following, we present the construction process of the monument to the fallen of all wars in which Slovenian citizens participated, which was erected in 2017 and is the main object of study in this article. After presenting the preliminary construction works, we discuss the relationship between the promising verbal descriptions of the future monument, the material reality that should have been materialized, and the users' perception of the site after it was built. A neutral form, as the monument has, for such an important content, according to several critics, does not symbolize what is expected of it. The user is the one who confirms the information in each description through his or her individual perception of the place. Most of the city's inhabitants do not identify with the image of the monument, nor with the message of separation between groups with opposing ideas, which unexpectedly arises from its form.