Black Bridge

At the beginning of the 20th century a simple wooden footbridge was built across the Žikovca stream just before it flows into the Savinja. Floodwater carried it away several times.

In 1923 Edvard Ebersberg, owner of the first artificial-slate factory in Styria, commissioned a new bridge as a form of advertising. It was roofed with the black artificial slate made in his Laško factory, and this is how the bridge got its name.

The Black Bridge became a favourite place for couples, walkers and young people in Laško, a motif for painters of local views and a distinctive town symbol. Older residents therefore made sure that even the wildest floods would not carry it away. Whenever the danger was greatest, firefighters tied the bridge to a nearby plum tree with a thick rope.

In the mid-1960s, in the ‘spirit of progress’, the bridge was replaced by a concrete structure which, despite local dissatisfaction, spoiled the characteristic view of Laško for many years. In 1997 Pivovarna Laško reconstructed the former Black Bridge on the same site using old photographs.