In the middle of hills, in the upper part of the valley of the Poljanska Sora river, there is a small basin in which Žiri lies. This is right at the juncture of three Slovenian regions: Gorenjska, Primorska and Notranjska. Only 30 kilometres separate us along the Poljanska dolina valley from Škofja Loka in Gorenjska, and a 15 kilometre-long road over a hill separates us from Idrija in Primorska. There are 22 kilometres to Logatec or Vrhnika, and there are also railway and highway.

Žiri lies at altitude of 487 metres, it has approximately 4980 inhabitants, and the municipality comprises 18 settlements.
Today urbanized town settlement resulted from joining Stare Žiri, Stara vas, Nova vas and Dobračevo. Villages and hamlets are scattered about the surrounding hills.

The basin is surrounded by a wreath of hills: at east by the Žirovski vrh ridge, at south by Goropeški grič, at west by the highest 987-metre high Mrzli vrh. Two valleys flow together in the Žiri basin, So(v)rina from south and Račevska from southeast. Above Tabor, the oldest part of Žiri, there is Žirk hill. According to folk legend, a malicious dragon Lintvern resides in Žirk. We can hear him drinking water from the underground lake, where he waits that an earthquake will make a hole through which he will come out and flood the valley and devour all beautiful girls. In this way the dragon revenged against those who had chained him in the black underworld.

According to the most frequent and most credible explanation, the name of the town of Žiri derives from the name of the beech fruit – mast. In the past the surroundings of Žiri were supposed to be overfull of beech woods. The subjects of the Bishops of Freising pastured pigs in these woods and paid a special mast tribute for it.

The oldest proof of life in the Žiri region is hidden a few kilometres up the Sora river. Matjaž’s small rooms are in the cliffs above the river in the direction towards Logatec. According to archaeological findings, the Neanderthal man was supposed to be dwelling in these caves or small rooms. The archaeological site reaches 50 000 years back to the Old Stone Age and it is the oldest archaeological site in Gorenjska.
In the Roman age period, there was a Roman road along the Poljanska dolina valley and it led through Žiri towards Aquileia and Notranjska. There are still visible remains of the Roman walls and road in Žirk.
The original settlement of Žiri was situated on the left bank of the Sora river, today’s old Žiri, below the oldest settlement of Tabor. The place was first mentioned in writing in 1291. At that time the Žiri area belonged to the dominion of the Bishops of Freising with their centre in Škofja Loka. At the end of the 13th century and in the beginning of the 14th century, the area was colonized and organized into the Žiri parish. The Žiri region had belonged to the Loka dominion for 800 years.

In the 19th century, shoemaking and bobbin-work developed in Žiri. Beside agriculture, these two activities were the most important activities that marked the identity of Žiri.

Žiri has always been a place by the border. A distinctive natural border runs along the hills west from the Žiri basin, and it is the watershed between the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. In the past this natural border governed also different administrative boundaries. In the period between both world wars, there was a national border between the kingdom of Yugoslavia and Italy here. Žiri was an important town by the border.

After the Second World War industry started developing here. Shoe factory Alpina resulted from shoemaking cooperatives, which took the name of Žiri to the world with the manufacture of sports shoes. Numerous successful companies and private entrepreneurs in wood, metalworking and service lines give the place a strong economic pulse. Agriculture has become mainly a supplementary activity.

Žiri prides itself upon numerous important personalities in the Slovenian, European and world scale. We cannot enumerate them all, nor present each of them separately. Academy-trained painters have their homes here (Maksim Sedej, Franjo Kopač, Tomaž Kržišnik), self-made painters, who are a true world phenomenon in their genre (Janez and Pavel Sedej, Jože Peternelj – Mausar, Konrad Peternel – Slovenec, Ivan Gluhodedov), academicians, writers, composer Anton Jobst. Many young creators joined them.