Soča River

The Soča is one of those rare rivers whose colour stays true from the mountains to the sea. It rises at 876 metres in the Trenta valley of the Julian Alps, in north-western Slovenia, and runs 138 kilometres to the Adriatic near Monfalcone, the last 43 of them in Italy, where it is called the Isonzo. For most of that distance the water is a startling emerald-to-turquoise green, clear enough to count the pebbles on the bed, and the Slovenes have long called it the Emerald Beauty.

The best of it is the upper course. Below the source the river squeezes through the Big and Little Soča gorges, where the current has polished white limestone into chutes, potholes and narrow slots only a few metres wide, and then opens into a broad gravel valley past Bovec, Kobarid and Tolmin, with the Tolmin Gorges on a side stream nearby. This stretch is home to the marble trout, a native fish now endangered, and it is the reason the valley became a centre for rafting and kayaking. Further down, at Solkan above Nova Gorica, the river passes under a railway viaduct opened in 1906 on the Bohinj line: its single stone arch of 85 metres, built from some 4,500 blocks, is the longest of any stone railway bridge in the world.

The same valley carries heavy memory. Between May 1915 and November 1917 the Isonzo Front ran along the river, and twelve battles were fought here between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies; more than half a million soldiers died. The last of them, in the autumn of 1917, is known as the Battle of Caporetto, the Italian name for Kobarid. Trenches, cemeteries and ossuaries remain along the banks, a quiet counterweight to the brightness of the water. The poet Simon Gregorčič, born in the valley, made the river the subject of his best-known poem, To the Soča.

Getting there

The source and gorges lie in Slovenia, around Bovec; the lower river crosses into Italy at Gorizia, about 53 km away. The nearest airport is Trieste Airport (TRS), about 68 km away; Ljubljana is the other gateway. Nomago buses link Ljubljana with Tolmin, Kobarid and Bovec, and in summer a free line runs from Bovec past the Soča source over the Vršič pass to Kranjska Gora. Hop-on shuttles serve Bovec, Kobarid and Tolmin within the valley.