Cerje Tower WW1 Museum
Green Slovenia is bordered by four countries, the Alps AND the Mediterranean sea and if you look carefully you will even see it is the shape of a big chicken!
So there are a lot of hidden little corners behind all those feathers and the main subject of this new secret place article is found high on top of a hill with stunning views above the far end of the Vipava Wine Valley.. or tucked behind the wing if you are still looking at that chicken!
We always knew the gigantic Cerje tower was up there in the heavens.. you cannot miss it.. but we did not know it's function at all.. So one bright & misty February day, we decided to pop up to this little corner of Green Slovenia and have a look around..
The Vipava valley is a 40km long uberstunning green wine region just around the corner from the Lodge, behind the large lump of rock known as Nanos mountain, (1,313m).
The centre line of this green Mediterranean wine valley starts out at near to sea level with huge, steep hills stuffed full of vines rising up on both sides and a powerful green river flowing down this middle.
The Vipava river bursts out of the mountain side in seven places (springs) in one of the prettiest towns in this valley, also called Vipava to form the river and flows down one of the most beautiful, peaceful green wine valleys you can hope to find in all Europe..
We are fascinated by this river, knowing at several places on it's journey, but had never seen the place with our own eyes where we had seen on the map that it leaves Green Slovenia to flow into the Friuli area of northern Italy and the mighty Soca river, now called the Izonso in Italy and a short hop to the Adriatic sea!
So we had a double adventure in mind and we are never surprised in Green Slovenia when we go out on a new expedition and end up finding lots of unexpected secret places and other Green surprises into the bargain to tell our guests and anyone else who will listen all about!
It is safe to say a Green daytrip out from the Lodge is NEVER what you might expect it to be.. there will always be little twists, turns and little Geen surprises along the way!
In just 40 mins you can whizz all the way from the Lodge to the end of the Vipava valley at Nova Gorica and the Italian border.
We chose to drive along the border a bit from Gorica to the town of Miren, crossing the wide bridge where cars traverse the Vipava river for the last time in Slovenia.
Miren has a quiet charm about it and particular would be a very nice place to sit outside, have a coffee and maybe even a dip in the crystal clear Vipava river, that just 40km ago was bursting out of a mountain in seven different places..
There are several little spots to duck down and join the water here and a path along the river too. The border is right outside the village so for an "ex island dweller" it is always quite mad to just go over another central European border for the fun of it.. so we did!
So Miren is where the Vipava river leaves Slovenia and soon joins the larger Soca river, now in Italy called the Izonso. We have already targeted a few more castles over on the other side of the border and an exciting looking nature park where the Soca meets the Adriatic sea.. so even more new secret places on our list to explore!
Down at the riverside in Miren, if you look up to see the Cerje Tower, magnificent on the skyline, you will also see a mighty church on top of a hill directly between Miren and the higher ridge!
So of course we decided to drive up and have a little explore on the way to the tower!
Despite being a church, the hilltop is called Miren Castle (Grad).. Although this hill is a mighty fine place for a castle it seems there was never a castle here, but regardless it is also a really good place for a church too!
There is a lovely winding road that leads up to the castle with little shrines to Jesus' final walk on the side of the road for company.
At the top the views down upon Miren are really good and the church is huge close up with twin towers and palm trees all over the place in very nice gardens indeed.
For us it was all about the views from up here, but you can also go inside the church to see the frescoes and other displays and find out if it really is a castle or a church!
We continued from Miren Grad up the road that connects Miren direction Komen, so this the road where the Vipava valley ends in Slovenia and and connects with the tip of the Red Karst mini region.. another of Green Slovenia's 7 wine regions.
The road goes steeply up into the forest.. we did this trip n early 2023 and were soon in for a huge shock!
You see in the summer of 2022, Slovenian firefighters and volunteers were battling a huge forest fire in the west of the country.. it was all over the local news and one summer day the smoke even carried down the Vipava valley to make a chilling, almost Martian orange sunset we had never seen before and never want to see again..
The fires were finally put out and 100 hectares of forest were destroyed, but now, HERE, we got this intense realisation that this was the place on this road leading up the hill where those terrible fires had reached.. The scene looked like something out of a Terminator movie.
Trees were blackened, the earth was scorched and as far as you could see was armageddon. It was very shocking. We had to stop in a side road to take in the destruction and it was very sad indeed to see the level of destruction.
We rembered on the news they had talked about "saving" towns and villages from the fire and we realised immediately that Miren at the foot of the hill where we had just been must have been one of those towns in grave danger.
We continued to the top of the hill and found the entrance to the nature park, called the Peace Park for reasons that will soon explained, where the Cerje tower is hosted and the devastation continued all the way to the final tower car park itself.
We could imagine this park area would be an extremely remote and fresh place to have a hike or a cycle away from it all, with a visit to the tower as the focus, but it will take a good few seasons for the green to grow back here.. but it will.
Indeed we have since learned that Slovenia intends to defend against these wildfires in the future by planting more of a mix of trees, more oak, beech and ash AND to build more of the iconic Karst stone walls that are a very special feature of the Karst area where you have now in fact entered, leaving the Vipava valley far below..
The devastated landscape here looks more pronounced with thousands of jagged white Karst rocks littering the ground. With the tower standing tall and silent in the solitary background, this was a fitting scene to help you imagine how it all was here during the first world world war.
And we soon found out that this is the function of the Cerje Tower.. It is both a memorial and fantastic museum for the horrors of the WW1 battles here on the front line between the Austro Hungarian empire and Italy.
For so many people the First World War is all about the French and Belgian battlefields, lined with poppies and trenches, but you need to know that Slovenia is the scene of the biggest mountain battle ever fought during WW1, costing one million soldiers!
That river we just told you about, the Soca, probably the most beautiful river in Europe, was the front line between the Austrians and Italians, called the Izonso front..
Yes this place and along the river up into the Alps was another front line for years and years with desperate generals sacrificing troops for cm's of rock. Slovenians were caught in the middle of all this depending on which side of the line they were.
And you can clearly see from the mountainous rocky terrain all around here there was almost nowhere to dig trenches..
Previously, we had thought there was only one fantastic museum in Slovenia dedicated to this huge mountain battle, further up the Izonso front in Kobarid..
The Kobarid Museum, as it is known, is a very, very good museum indeed, that beautifully explains the human story as well as the logistics of this crazy conflict fought in such a beautiful place on earth it is hard to believe.
But we were in for a surprise when we entered the Cerje tower to also find it stuffed full of accounts, stories, photos and exhibits from this terrible conflict.
Tolmin is a picture perfect little Alpine town on a stunningly beautiful aqua river, so without the help of a really good museum, it can be difficult to comprehend what horrors took place there a little over one hundred years ago ..
But here, high on top of the hill in a bleak and desolate landscape, now temporarily scarred by the forest fires and with those jagged white Karst stones covering the floor, dotted with lumps of metal dating back to that conflict.. it is much easier to imagine what it could have been like for the people trapped inside their fate.
The Cerje tower has floor after floor of displays. You start with an induction film which introduces the scale and size of the conflict and brings home the personal connections around here, especially with local Slovenes.
Look around, there are interesting accounts of the 17th Infantry Regiment and the 87th Regiment, which were made up mainly of Slovenians. You can see pictures of the proud soldiers faces, with moustaches twitching and read how they were moved around the conflict from battle to battle and of course, tragically, the immense battering they took.. the one lesson we should all take form any war is there are never winners..
It is wonderful to wander around the exhibits, gravitating to the top of the building up stairs, (there is also a lift almost to the top). Most displays have English explanations, but it is fair to say, the higher up the tower you go the less international explanation can be found.
You can also find out a bit about more recent conflicts.. Especially useful for the benefit of the vistor to Slovenia is a history of the short war of Independence from 1991, with a good mini exhibition all about what happened when a whole people went to war for 10 days and became a nation, with lots of photos and explanations from that time.
By the way if you are particularly looking for a more comprehensive understanding and exhibition of how Slovenia got it's independence in 1991, then go see the Pivka Tank Museum, just 20 mins from the Lodge, which has a whole warehouse full of not just tanks, but planes, helicopters, even a submarine and loads of accounts of what really happened.. the best independence display we have found here as foreigners..
The Cerje tower is a little more focussed on the events at this end of the Soca river, but from our foreign point of view we can tell you that either this Cerje Tower OR the Tolmin WW1 museum would be terrific one stop shop to get a chilling overview of what happened here in Green Slovenia, directly on the Front Line, never to be repeated.. and then repeated just 20 years later.. then again and again and again here in Europe and in other parts of the world..
The cherry on the top of your visit to this tower is going to the top floor for fabulous 360 degree views through thick glass windows, a real treat.
Outside at the back of the tower is a little cafe with more fantastic views down over Miren, making the huge church look very far off and small indeed!
This tower is also an integral marker point on ALL the Alpine and WW1 memorial trails, but would be a great place to do a hike or a bike ride as it has a huge open national park kinda feel about it.
Maybe you will hike up here as part of a day out specifically exploring one of these trails or you will stop off here at the Cerje tower as part of an amazing loop dayout along the end of the Vipava valley and back through the Teran wine region on the way home to the Lodge..
We decided to head back down through Miren to rejoin the Vipava river and follow it back along country roads and cute wine villages. We tried to hug the river as much as poss and this is an adventure in itself..
Think about heading towards idyllic little wine making villages of the Upper Vipava Valley.. like Vrtoce, Rence, Dornberk and Zalosce to hug the river and get a real sense of living in the top part of the Vipava wine valley.. maybe you will also find a secret place to dip your tootsies in the river!
Or maybe you will use this day to pop into Italy from here and visit the old Slovenian city of Trieste or the Italian Adriatic coast at Sistiana, or even those castles we mentioned earlier!
Whether you visit the Cerje tower or the Kobarid museum or BOTH of them during your Green Slovenian adventures, we should just remind you how unexpectedley amazing they both are and that you are only using up maybe 1-3 hours of your day, so there is plenty of time for lots of other green stuff..
We have noticed, Green Slovenia really does have a lot of excellent micro museums, all over the place.. Sometimes on hols elsewhere you might go to a museum just to fill in some time cos there is nothing else to do, but here in Green Slovenia it is the exact opposite of that.. there ARE plenty of other amazing things to do, BUT how could you not visit the museum as for just an hour or two of your time you will be richly rewarded!
You would expect the capital city to have some great museums and that is deffo the case here too in Ljubljana, but for us, the very best, most interesting and surprising micro museums are out in the countryside in the green secret spots, where you would least expect to find them..
This is why we try to help you find some of them with our own MUSEUMS page and our extensive SECRET PLACES TO VISIT and DAYTRIPS sections too!
We have escaped now long enough here in Green Slovenia to be more at one with nature and to realise that however new or latest model your phone camera is there is a much bigger picture out there and it is ALL AROUND you here in Green Slovenia..
There are not many, if any other countries in the grand old lady of Europe where you can still do that..
No matter how much people muck up this planet, nature will ALWAYS win and so do not be put off by the barren landscape at the Cerje tower.. go visit in the blissful knowledge that nature is repairing the damage as we idly twiddle around on our smartphones..
French Connection en Slovenie
