The dragon from the rooster's egg
At the entrance to the old town centre, resting on a bed of rocks, a dragon awaits you. According to legend, this dragon was responsible for the creation of the town of Tržič.
- 1 / 5 The dragon from the rooster's egg
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About the sculpture
The story about the dragon is an important part of the intangible cultural heritage of the town of Tržič, which has been preserved through the generations. The dragon was made by members of the culture and arts society Ampus under the leadership of Anže Bizjak, Anže Aljančič and Aleš Povalej.
The sculpture weighs more than a ton and is made entirely of metal parts: nearly 200 m of round pipes used just for the construction and 900 m of approximately 4 cm wide metal strips cut from 1.5 mm thick sheets used for the finished appearance.
The head and individual segments are also cut from 1.5 mm thick sheets. Nearly 5 km of welding wire was used to weld together all the parts.
The creation of the town of Tržič is inseparably connected to the dragon from the rooster's egg that split apart Košuta and triggered a rockslide. "If an old rooster lays an egg, an enormous dragon will hatch from it," say the old folk of St. Anne. The describe the event as follows:
"Centuries ago more than half the settlement below Ljubelj consisted of smithies. A blacksmith there had an old rooster that went up to Košuta, where he laid an egg, and from the egg hatched a dragon. The dragon burrowed into the mountain and as he grew into an enormous beast this split the mountain in two. This triggered a rumbling rock avalanche that buried the village below the mountain. To save themselves the villagers ran into the valley. After a time they ran out of breath and stopped. This is the site of the present-day town of Tržič."
Even today we can observe large blocks of rock in the area around Podljubelj and the valley below Košuta, silent witnesses to the event. In the 14th century people did not know how to explain the avalanche other than to attribute its creation to a terrible dragon, and thus the legend about the creation of Tržič came into being.