Gornja Radgona

Gornja Radgona is a town in Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Gornja Radgona. Once it was a defensive stronghold for today's regional centre and its twin city, Bad Radkersburg, on the other side of the Mura River in Austria. The towns were split in 1919, when the state of Styria was divided between Austria and Slovenia. After that they developed separately, and Gornja Radgona grew into a new town centre.HistoryTraces of Neolithic settlement on Castle Hill attest to settlement during the Urnfield culture. Later finds indicate that there may have been a small Roman settlement here. The Parish of Gornja Radgona belonged to the Diocese of Salzburg and was founded under the Spanheims in the first half of the 12th century. The parish church in Gornja Radgona is dedicated to Saint Peter and was built in 1813 and extended in 1890.The history of Gornja Radgona itself reaches back to the 12th century, when a settlement was established beneath Ratigoj Castle. King Albert I of Habsburg founded today’s Radkersburg on an island in the Mura River, and it was mentioned as a market in 1265 and as a town in 1299. Eventually the old settlement turned into a suburb of the town. Gornja Radgona was built on the slope of Castle Hill (265 m) and the tip of the Slovene Hills (Slovenske gorice), which separate the Apače Basin from the Mura Basin.