The interwar period in Planina is a time of daring smuggling tales, blood vendettas, brawls between Italian soldiers, exchanges of fire between border services, international disputes, fascist violence, and even a visit by Mussolini, who — only three years before Italy's renewed occupation of Yugoslavia as part of its expansionist eastern ambitions and the establishment of an occupation regime marked by systematic violence and war crimes — spoke here of friendship between the two nations.
The border stones stand today as silent witnesses to a period that left Planina deeply scarred: abandoned hamlets, forced Italianisation, the ruins of a stately manor, and the memory of a time when a border divided neighbours along a single street.
The karst landscape of the Planinsko polje, with a different face in every season, contributed yet another local peculiarity: regular floods that washed away the border line several times a year, so that the guards patrolled their stretch by boat.
THE RAPALLO BORDER was the 250 km long former boundary line between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Italy, running from the tripoint at Peč above Rateče to the Adriatic port of Reka.
Beyond the border remained the Slovenes of the Kanalska dolina in Carinthia, parts of Kranjska near Rateče, Posočje, the Idrijsko–Cerkljansko region, Goriška, Istria and Notranjska. From the border above Logatec, Italian border guards could even observe Ljubljana itself.
In the timeline below we have gathered some of the most important events in the formation and evolution of the western border between Slovenia and Italy.
The trail is waymarked and follows existing gravel roads along and across the Planinsko polje, and the streets of Planina. The section along the main road has both pavement and street lighting.
The trail comprises eight individual points where the remains of the Rapallo border are presented — preserved border markers and the location of the busiest road border crossing in Slovenia. The construction of the Italian Alpine Wall fortification system, which around Planina consists of five defensive groups, is also presented.
The trail connects locations across the Planinsko polje and the village of Planina in the Občina Postojna, where remnants of the former state border between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Italy from the interwar period are still visible. It is four kilometres long and takes up to two hours to complete.
PLANINA, a small town in Slovenia, was shaped between the two World Wars by the former border between Yugoslavia and Italy. It still hides many remnants and stories from a period that Slovenes remember above all for an unjust border. The two states signed the border treaty on 12 November 1920 in the Italian town of Rapallo. With it, Italy gained diplomatic recognition for the territory it had occupied since November 1918 and formally annexed in 1921. Through the Rapallo border, Slovenes lost their cultural and economic centres Trst and Gorica, access to the sea, and more than a third of the nation, and were for nearly three decades subjected to a policy of denationalisation and violence.
Planina — still a small market town in 1918 along the important route between Ljubljana and Postojna — remained for five years one of the unresolved border questions. Beyond the interests of the two states, the border was also shaped by the Windischgrätz family, then one of the most prominent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which owned vast forest estates, sawmills and modern timber-processing works, as well as a number of castles in our region.
Walk at your own responsibility. The route follows existing public paths. Please respect private property, do not damage anything and do not litter.