Železniki are the central settlement of the Selška Valley.
Natural resources helped make the town an important economic center under the Bishops of Freising: the only completely preserved smelting furnace in Slovenia and the picturesque architecture remind us that the history has always been closely linked to ironworking.
Železniki and the nearby villages, are a genuine ethnographical treasury; bobbin lace and dražgoški kruhek (hand crafted honey cookies) introduced the name of the valley to the world, as did the Slovene impressionist Ivan Grohar, whose life and work visitors can get to know in his birth house in Sorica.