ZICE Fortress Monastery
This is the very definition of a Green Slovenian secret place in a mini region you have probably never heard about and have close to zero chance of pronouncing, but just 90 mins direct from the Lodge..
It's just off the motorway and this Fortress Monastery has only 4 letters in it's name and is almost 1,000 years old, but you will probubbly not be able to say this name either in a million years..
It is a sensationally beautiful monastery decked out with stunning fairy tale Harry Potter like towers and completely protected by a massive castle wall, but translated from Slovene into English it is marketed as the "Zice Charterhouse".. what on Earth is a charterhouse!
It is as if there is some ancient monastic curse that defies you from even knowing about.. let alone finding one of the wonders of Green Slovenia..
We had lived here for 7 years before we found it by chance.. (maybe we broke a mirror before and got bad luck)..
But the Zice Monastery Fortress.. aka Zice Charterhouse went instantly into our Slovenian top ten as soon as we walked through the gates and uttered our second "wow", (the first wow was when we saw the outside for the first time) and there were many more wows to come in that special day.
(We should also warn you that our Slovenian top ten actually has at least 50 secret places in it.. Green Slovenia is just so packed with amazing stuff it is impossible to have just 10 in your top ten)!!
So the only reason we found this wonder of the medieval world was by spotting a castle-like symbol on a paper map that we were studying for our next day's trip to the nearby Rogla mountain for some hiking during covid.. we absolutely love Slovenian castles, there are hundreds here, each one so completely different to the next one..
After a lot of clicking around, we finally got a photo of ZICE showing those big castle walls with fantastic towers that looked just so incredible, we decided immediately to go visit this place in the suspicion it would become a part of our Secret Places to Visit section..
So after knowing about it for just one day of the 10 years plus we have been exploring Green Slovenia, we added it into our daytrip to Rogla mountain the very next day AND these are the kinda decisions YOU might also need to make here when you realise how much there is to see!
Now we will tell you all about our visit, which provided total justification for us taking the time and energy to go find & visit ZICE too..
So how do I get to visit this hidden Monastery Fortress?
If you think about it, Monks didn't really want to be bothered by anything or anyone much at all, so these French guys rocked up in Green Slovenia and found a stunningly beautiful, secluded spot away from it all at the end of a secret valley..
Maybe you are thinking in a similar way by making the great choice to come visit Green Slovenia and spend a bit of time in Green paradise?
On our first visit here the signage was on the scale of non existent to pathetic, so it was a minor miracle we found Zice at all, but for our second visit in the summer, we have a good news story for Slovenian tourism as there are shiny new brown signs to follow directly from the motorway!
But it is NEVER gonna be quite that easy around here cos the name of the junction to turn off at on the motorway that runs between Ljubblyjana and Maribor is Slovenske Konjice, which means "Slovenian Horse", so you will understand why we prefer here to continue to call it Horseville!
With the greatest of respect, the Slovenian language spoken by just 2 million people and being learned very slowly by 2 more, a Finn and a Welsh guy, is realistically the greatest barrier to Slovenian tourism, cos Locals still don't properly get it that visitors have absolutely no clue what these letters scrambled together mean.. Not a Scooby Doo..
The language problem is even more complicated, cos even if you could painfully type the Slovenian name of Slovenske Konjice (not even sure if I got that right) into your navigation, Slovene words ALSO morph their endings, so you almost have zero chance of the navigation actually recognising what you have typed.
And this leads into another problem where there are multiple towns and village sharing the very same name.. so you might select the right name in the wrong region..
The best advice is probubbly to find where you are going directly on the map, check the photo looks like the place you wanna go, then click on that and do your directions from that point..
It all sounds a bit fussy, but we would have at least 209 USD 25 cents if we had a dollar for every time we heard how our guests got it wrong just blindly following googlemaps etc here in Green Slovenia, so better you are warned.
Also if you are lost here, there is no point winding down the window, (kids that is what we used to do in the old days and it was great) to ask a stranger even if their English is perfect, cos you will have to try to pronounce just the 4 simple letters for ZICE and we can tell you from experience, you have zero chance of getting it right.. so another tip is to WRITE IT DOWN and show it on a piece of paper!!
OK so Horseville is the next exit AFTER Celje, going direction from Ljub to Maribor, but be careful as ZICE village is actually on the opposite side of the motorway from Horseville and the ZICE Monastery is not in ZICE village, it is outside and actually on the same side of the motorway as Horseville.. which not on the Zice side!!
So thank the Lord for the new signs, even if you need to know the Fortress Monastery is called a "Cartusian Whatever" in Slovenian English!! (But seriously, so much easier now to find it with the signs)..
There are actually a couple of ways to get to Zice from the motorway, by passing Horseville if you follow the new signs, but actually Slovenske Konjice is really very pretty with a lovely little old high street, so why not make a stop there too, before or after?
ZICE is hidden at the end of a big green valley and on your final approach do look out for the massive stork's nests on top of chimneys or big match stick poles that look like they could be used by a juggler to balance some spinning plates!
If you are really lucky you might get to see some new baby storks sitting around like teenagers demanding food..
Don't worry that you seem to zig zag under the motorway, but start getting really excited when you spot a beautiful big church with a slate roof.. this is St John's and is connected to the monastery, so you are on the right track.. keep going a bit more until you see a big car park on your right, no doubt empty, from here you will get your first view of the castle towers!
You need to walk 150 metres along the narrow road with no pavement to get to the monastery and there is actually another much smaller car park opposite what was the first pub in Slovenia, built by the monks to accomodate guests, so you could get a sneaky space by there..
There is now a really good little shop in this ancient INN and a cafe on a wooden terrace with great views to the fortress, but that is for later..
You can buy your entrance tickets in the shop and we recommend you also take headphones.. the audio is fantastic and will be the teacher for your ears as your eyes will be very busy being as big as saucers soaking up the amazing sights inside!
What on earth is a Charterhouse?
It's a monastery for Carthusian monks.. ok! This will not be so important for 99% of visitors, good to know of course and important to respect that most of the monks who lived here took a vow of silence and lived inside little stone cells most of the time contemplating.. other monks worked in the fields and made wine.
So this order of mainly French monks came here in the second half of the 1100's and built this fantastic monastery that was visited by crusading knights and other notables and also had to be protected from Turkish invaders with this huge castle wall..
All of this is incredibly lucky for us, cos they have left behind an absolute beauty of a fantasy castle in fantastic condition like no other you have probably seen before to enjoy..
But why would I make a pilgrimage here when I could go to a lake with an island and a church on top or a go down a big cave in a train?
Well of course you could and should see those places as well in the blissful knowledge that there is no other country in Europe where you can visit such a huge range of amazing different natural Green wonders, all in such a tiddly area..
But this Zice fairy tale monastery is over 850 years old and mostly still standing.. it is a monastery protected by a massive castle wall with hobbit like roofs on the stone buildings inside and towers you might expect to see in a Harry Potter film.. as real as Golden eggs.
Oh yes and there will probubbly be next to no visitors there either!!
To put Zice into a bit of global perspective.. it really is a wonder of the European ancient world built about the same time as Ankor Wat was being constructed on the other side of the world in Cambodia by the Khmer dynasty.. yep, it is that amazing in our opinion.. we would put it into the same breathe as Ankor Wat, (but on a much, much smaller scale, of course and you don't need to come here on a tuk tuk.. however that that might be an idea for the future and there is so much scope to E Bike here from Horseville as well)!
The excellent audio guide will escort you around in your own language (or at least English) in a matter of an hour and a bit.. When you will walk through those huge castle gates you get to see the beautifully restored church.. as big as a small cathedral..
On our first visit here the church was still being restored, so we were delighted on our second visit to see what a good job has been done.. actually restoring the shell of the building from the outside, with half the roof facing front restored and protecting the inside of the building from the weather.. a very clever restoration.
Everything around here was understated in the Monks time and the inside of the cathedral is basic and beautiful.. As is the main Monastery building, which is sparsely furnished with just about enough stuff to help you understand how this particular order of monks lived their religious life here.
The narration is superb, the poor chap even does a great job trying to make sense of and explain the nonsense of how Zice got it's name from a rabbit, but this is indicative of what happens when Slovenian is literally translated directly into English and totally confuses everybody else, so don't worry too much about the rabbit, it's just a story!!
The real thrills here come from wandering around outside in the cloisters and grassy grounds and getting close to those amazing towers..
You wouldn't really be surprised if a huge dragon came out of the sky and landed on one of these towers as you wander around!
The main hobbit towers on the back wall draw you up the hill like magnets and as you climb up to them you can make out some of the stone foundations in the grass of the humble cells where the silent brothers lived.
The view from the top of this hill down to the massive church and out past the main castle walls is fantastic.
We were really blown away by this place and if they could also open up a few of these magical towers so people could see inside and maybe along the battlements of the castle walls too then this place would be uber uberamazing.
Another monastic feature that may have helped entice the knights to come visit and offer their services, might be the cellar..
This might add to any suspicions you may have had about what some of the monks actually got up to and it is also interesting to know that Zice and Horseville are right at the start of one of Slovenia's 7 wine regions, this one stretching up to Maribor..
The wine around here has an Austrian feel to it and the cellar has the same local unique cuvee called "horse wine" from the local Slovenske Konjice vineyard.. (there is a very nice restaurant in the middle of the Zlati Gric vineyard by the way, about 10 mins from here and you can find more about it in the Horseville section of our Rogla mini Region article).
On our first visit we were lucky enough to see a pottery display done by a local professor who has a little shop inside the monastery with items to buy.. he made a little cup with a handle to show us how it was done and we realised this was the first time in our lives that we had actually watched this process in real life..
It added to the magic of this place and we were so grateful that this lovely man is here to entertain and educate visitors.. if he is around, please show him your support and thanks by buying some of his wares and encouraging this shy little country to put more of their excellent local products and people in the shop window to enhance our visitor experience and fill our rucksacks with pressies for Aunties and Grannys!
It actually took us quite a few years exploring around Green Slovenia's vast array of secret places before we realised that Slovenia actually has a very unique catergory of medieval attractions that most.. if indeed any other countries in Europe DO NOT have and this is what we call the Fortress Church..
You see Slovenia was right on the front line of Medieval Europe where Turkish raiding parties marauded with impunity and sometimes the only thing you could do was get yourself and your possessions safely out of reach.
So ZICE is another fab example of one of these Fortress Churches!
We mentioned that Ye Olde Shoppe outside the castle walls before and it is great with lots of local goodies and souvenirs. As well as being the old INN it was also used like a hotel for monastery visitors and nowadays you can still get a mighty fine special monks tea on the cafe terrace too..
Zice is an incredible example of what you had to build in the old days to keep the residents safe.. You wouldn't go to this trouble just to keep the double glazing salesman out!
There are lots of other castles and churches here in all shapes and sizes, but to see a place where a church had a huge castle and towers built around it for protection makes Zice a very special place indeed..
You will very probably and should very probably also visit the amazing Predjama castle which is unique in different ways to Zice and equally there is nothing else like it in the world, but Green Slovenia is also full of other fantastic castles, churches, lakes, caves, waterfalls and pretty much everything else that is amazing in Europe..
It almost isn't fair to the rest of Europe!!
Some of those places are better publicised than others, but we bet, just like us, before you spotted the alluring photo of this Zice Fortress that you had probably never heard about it!
We came here last time in the MIDDLE of summer and seriously, just look how empty the car park was! There was next to nobody around and this is SO TYPICAL of so many other secret places to visit here that you also probably never heard of..
So the ball is now in your court..
If you wanna wander around a lake with thousands of others or a castle above a city where you will be desperate to find anything of interest other than the great view, then go for it, but we hope to have tickled your fancy here with a trip out into the Green countryside and almost 1,000 year old treasure.
When we tell you that Green Slovenia is almost completely empty of tourists, particularly outside the 6 weeks school hols in high summer.. we are being completely serious.. cos it is! Even then if you plan your logistics well you can still see the better known places and mix them into amazing daytrips with the many more uncrowded places..
We put a few photos of Horseville in too as it has a really pleasant, quiet high street for an ice cream, coffee or even a meal.
There is a really beautiful church at the top of the high street and a bridge of horses at the other end with a little stream running down the centre of the high st..
French Connection en Slovenie
