On 1 January 2007, the euro became the monetary unit of the Republic of Slovenia.
Slovenia is the first new member state of European Union which adopted the euro and thus became the 13th member of the eurozone.
More information on the introduction of the euro in Slovenia>>
About former Slovene Money - the Slovenian Tolar (Short review)
- Former Slovene bank-notes
(photographs of bank-notes) - Former Slovene coins
(photographs of coins)
Slovenia introduced its own currency, the Slovene tolar (SIT), on 8 October 1991. It became convertible in accordance with the standards of the International Monetary Fund in September 1995. It had been well-established, with a relatively high level of stability and reputation.
On 27 June 2004, Slovenia entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism ERM2. According to the convergence report of the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) on 16 May 2006, Slovenia met the criteria to adopt the euro. Slovenia introduced the euro on 1 January 2007.
History
The principal decision concerning the Slovene money - Slovenian Tolar was the selection of the narrative features - the motif and story - to appear on the nine bank-notes (in denominations of 10 000, 5000, 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, 20 and 10 tolars). The Bank of Slovenia and the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts chose personalities who were important in the history of the Slovene identity. And the decision also meant that work began for the designer Miljenko Licul.
Licul's fundamental idea was that money was the projection of the outcome of work, the reflection of newly-created material values. This was why the chosen personality was always represented as a motif set in the present time context, in the actual relation between creativity and its award. Each likeness was set in a triangle: the person who represented an important innovation in a certain sphere, then the field this person worked in, symbolised by certain tools, and the result of the relation person-tool. The triangle person-tool-product was therefore the basic idea behind the design of the Slovene tolars.
A further level of layout included the institution which the chosen person was more or less directly related to. The institution was usually represented by its architectural characteristics, the most complex record of different temporal and other impulses. An innovation in the representation of personalities on bank-notes were the portraits (all portraits were the work of Rudi Spanzel) which continued into silhouettes. The features of the face were thus also represented in profile, and the spatial aspect of the portrait gently continued into the surface of the note and further into the motifs in the triangle.
The largest bank-note (10,000 tolars) was dedicated to the author Ivan Cankar (1876-1918), the 5000-tolar bank-note to painter Ivana Kobilica (1861-1926) and the 1000-tolar bank-note was embellished by a portrait of France Prešeren (1800-1848), the greatest Slovene poet. The 500-tolar bank-note was dedicated to the architect Jože Plečnik (1800-1848), the 200 to the composer Jacobus Gallus (1550-1591), the 100 to the painter Rihard Jakopič (1869-1943). Then came the mathematician Jurij Vega (1754-1802) on the 50-tolar bank-note, on the 20 the chronicler Janez Vajkard Valvazor (1641-1693) and finally on the 10-tolars bank-note the writer of the first book in the Slovene language the Protestant reformer Primož Trubar (1508-1586).
The typographic material used on tolar notes was, in a way, a tribute to classicism - serif was used - but it did not reach back to the historical classicism. The same typography was successfully used on the former Slovene passport (designed by Miljenko Licul) while on the notes the numeric value was, in terms of correspondence with the space-surface aspect of the image, extended into the third dimension.
The two basic ideas - the triangle person-tool-product and an implication of transience, the portrait continuing into a silhouette - were therefore upgraded with colours. The idea of having beautiful and cheerful bank-notes for the third millennium was drawn from guilders. Colourful liveliness incorporated in the story each note told, was complemented by the tactile features of the paper produced in Radeče. In addition to the pleasant rustle the paper was also very durable.
Unlike the bank-notes which conveyed historical and cultural stories, the coins were characterised by motifs taken from nature. The animals depicted were all part of the ecosystem of this part of the world (a goldenhorn, swallow, grasshopper, trout and proteus anguinus).
Tomaž Brate / MM, No. 4/92
500-tolar bank-note: a portrait of the architect Jože Plečnik in his typical apparel, silhouette with shaker hat Plečnik always wore; a pair of compasses as the tool and a circular ground plan as an aspect of his work; the front facade of the national and University Library in Ljubljana designed by Plečnik, with certain elements emphasised (a chair, a pillar with a lamp and the handle of the entrance door); the ground plan with a perspective adds to the dynamics of the whole. The colours (red and orange nuances prevail) follow the colour of the brick and stone facade of the Library (photo).
Links to photographs: