HISTORY

Unquestionably, the Karst first became well-known due to the tragic events of WWI, which called more than a million of soldiers to the Isonzo Front. In futile battles for a few square kilometres which raged for two years on the border between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, more than half a million of soldiers died and found their final resting place in the karst soil.

The Austrian soldiers defended their south-western borders (and the towns of Trieste and Gorizia) from attacks of the Italian Army at the Doberdò plateau. After Gorizia had fallen on 9 August 1916, the Gorizia karst region was occupied by the Italian Army. Its soldiers set up the artillery and dug out trenches all over the plateau - they are still visible today. The Austrians transferred their defence to the Komen and Trieste karst regions to continue with their defence of Trieste.

In these tragic historical circumstances, the Karst became known as one of the bloodiest and cruelest battlefields of WWI and was portrayed as such in numerous national literatures. The Slovene novelist Prežihov Voranc portrayed our local places in his monumental collective novel Doberdob. Hungarian writer Máté Zalka also wrote a novel titled Doberdó. Giuseppe Ungaretti wrote about these places in his hermetic poems, while Kornel Abel described them in his book Karst. Ein Buch vom Isonzo (A Book about Isonzo). Even Rudyard Kipling wrote several newspaper reports on the Karst.

However, the history of the Karst is not limited to WWI - it goes much further back in time. In the Karst, a visitor may find remnants of prehistoric forts, see places which Virgil sang praise to, and find elements of fortified architecture from the times of Turkish raids in Europe, as well as castles which were used to defend the border of the Habsburg Monarchy from the Venetians. And much more than that - the karst landscape is a veritable concentration of European history.