A colourful history has seen the Castle serve as a fortress, a military hospital, a prison and a temporary refuge for the homeless - amongst other things. More recently since the 1960s it has undergone extensive very tasteful redevelopment, and is now a busy event space with three main venues and a small theatre as well as being a top Slovenian tourist hotspot.

The CitySource 96s were specified by Tomaz Novak, the Castle’s Technical Manager. They have been fitted with the integral Lumen Radio wireless DMX receiver cards allowing remote data control, which is especially useful for outdoor applications, for convenience of operation and saving on cabling. It is also very easy to move the units around as needed.

Novak was looking at various fixtures for the task of lighting the courtyard and consulted MK Light Sound, Robe’s Slovenian distributor – amongst others.

He has also has previous good experiences with Robe as they purchased some LED PARs a couple of years ago.

MK and Robe’s architectural division Anolis came up with a lighting design concept for the courtyard and detailed visualisations of how the CitySource 96s would work when strategically positioned … and make the space look fabulous.

After considering all his options, Novak decided that this was the best size-to-power choice, and also the one offering the best quality of light – which needed to be powerful but not harsh.

Due to heritage restrictions, the fixtures had to be of a certain size and able to blend unobtrusively in to the environment as well as having to be positioned in specific locations around the courtyard.

The first CitySource 96s to arrive on site out of the batch are custom painted to RAL 8014 to match the bronzy brown colour of the Castle roof.

Mostly, the fixtures will be run in a signature soft white colour, but the colour will be changed for events which include film screenings in the summer and the winter festive season, and they can also be moved into different places in the courtyard which additionally houses two of the city’s leading restaurants.

Robe’s CitySource 96 features high powered RGBW LEDs which are densely populated to produce the very bright output. The unit is completely silent due to the convection cooling system and the IP 65 is great for exterior installations like this. The unique combination of RGBW LED colours delivers a stunning quality of white light rarely seen in competitive products, and this is now being appreciated at Ljubljana Castle.