The town of Slovenske Konjice lies below the northern slopes of Mount Konjice () and the winegrowing Škalce Hills. On a hill above the town to the southwest are the ruins of 12th-century Gonobitz Castle (, ), which has later additions and was abandoned in the 18th century. Its ruins have been partially restored. Above Old Square () stands the medieval
Trebnik Mansion. The more than 860-year-old dense town line is a sloping square, from Trebnik Mansion past St. George's parish church, along a small stream in an open channel, down to the
Dravinja River. The new Town Square (
Mestni trg) is on the other bank of the river, connected with Old Square by a bridge with four horse heads on the corners. The dominant structure in the upper part of the town's medieval core is the
parish church dedicated to
Saint George The veneration of the saint at this place goes even further back in history. The town was mentioned in written sources dating to 1165 as a seminal parish. The castle was first mentioned in 1148 and the
market town in 1236. The town itself was not surrounded by walls. At the time of the
Ottoman raids, the church with its
vicarage served as a fortified refuge. A second church in the settlement is dedicated to
Saint Anne. It dates to the mid-16th century with a 17th-century
belfry and
Baroque additions. The main street and the transversal connections above the Dravinja are lined with longitudinal or transversally positioned one-storey houses with well-preserved Gothic cores and Renaissance additions. The façades were restyled in the 19th century (
Biedermeier,
Historicism). A rarity is the
Art Nouveau building of the former savings bank. A
Marian column dating to the mid-18th century and a column shrine dedicated to
Saint Florian above the stream (both designed by the local artist Franc Zamlik in 1750) dominate the open square. The town core is well preserved.Slovenske Konjice played a role during the
Slovenian peasant revolt of 1515, with rebels here composing a letter with their demands to send to
the emperor in Vienna. Economic development was boosted after construction of main
Vienna to
Trieste road in the 18th century. During the 19th century the town got a local court. The
Austrian Southern Railway was built in 1846, but it ran east of Konjice. On 20 June 1892, work started on a
narrow gauge (760 mm)
steam railroad line called
Konjičanka from
Poljčane to Slovenske Konjice, which was opened on 20 December 1892. On 29 June 1921 it was extended to
Zreče. It was closed in 1963, and the tracks were removed in 1970. A museum locomotive K.3 (Gonobitz), built by the Krauss factory at
Linz and used on this line, is on display at the
Slovenian Railway Museum in
Ljubljana. In 2022, torrential rains caused basements to flood in Slovenske Konjice.
Name Over the centuries, the name
Konjice appears in written documents in various forms:
Gonviz (1251),
Gombicz (1370),
Gannabitz (1570),
Gonaviz (1594),
Gonavitz (1630),
Gonwitz (1636),
Gonowitz (1662),
Ganowiz (1680),
Gonnawitz (1680), and modern German
Gonobitz. The
adjective Slovenske was added to the Slovene name
Konjice in 1934, under the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in order to distinguish it from the town of
Konjic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ==Monuments==