• →   KARST
• →   CAVES
• →   HISTORY
• →   CASTELLIERI
• →   FLORA
• →   VEGETATION
• →   FAUNA

The “Classic” Karst

In 1689 Valvasor, the sharpest and most attentive geographer ever, defined this area as follows: ...”There lies a wide desert with lakes of pure water…the soil is mostly stony...from more than one point the eyes are free to wander for miles but everything is grey, nothing is green, there are rocks everywhere...in other places people coexist with abundant lakes...sometimes the inhabitants do not have any wood nearby and are able to survive thanks to their tiny cultivated fields. The inhabitants who look  for wood and water far away replace them with wine of good quality, red or white one, of various sorts…”
It was absolutely impossible to find another territory like this showing such physiographic, geomorphologic, economic features either in Europe or beyond the borders of the world known at that time.
The past and present name of this area - Carso in Italian (but also Kras, Karst) - derives from its Indo-European root kar, which means stone. This is a region where those phenomena, later referred to as Karstic by scientists, used to show and still show a development, an intensity and an impressiveness which are remarkably higher than the average ones. 
The foregoing can be explained by geology: limestone rocks, also present in the depths, come out to the surface; these rocks are being slowly but inexorably dissolved by water, thus giving particular aspects and forms to the surface and underground areas. The surface dissolution leads to the formation of the so called doline (sinkholes conveying the water towards deeper levels), of  polje (flat and long plains across which a stream of water may occasionally flow), of limestone pavements (rocks coming out to the surface on which the dissolution engraves the karren), of kamenitze (dissolution holes).
Even if the Karst area does not reach high altitudes, it looks impressive because of  its physiographic aspect: it abruptly arises from the sea with high falesie walls, that is vertical rock sheers marked by valleys (such as  Val Rosandra), which are strongly characterised by a nearly Alpine aspect. Going more and more through the hinterland, the landscape with its flat rocky areas is enlivened by a large number of depressions and soft hills.
From the physiographic point of view, borders are quite clear: in the South-West they are delineated by the Gulf of Trieste and the low coastline of sandstone and marlstone (flysch), whereas in the West and North-West by the Friuli plain and the Isonzo river. The north-eastern limit is represented by the Vipava Valley, the eastern one by the small and wide elevations of the Pivka region. Going further towards South-East the border can be outlined along the Brkini Hills, the valley of the Timavo river (upper Reka), the Čičerija elevations and the Kras Plateau of Materija and of the Podgorski Kras.