About this journey

Jesenice station sits in the Sava Dolinka valley, close to the borders with Austria to the north and Italy to the west — a crossroads that shaped its history. The station building visible at the start of the journey was rebuilt between 1953 and 1955 to replace a structure destroyed by Allied air raids in early 1945, resulting in a modernist form faced in white marble with hexagonal windows. From here the line heads south-west along the Bohinjska železniška proga, the Bohinj Railway, an imperial undertaking built at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to strengthen links between its interior and the Port of Trieste.

The section from Jesenice to Trieste was inaugurated on 23 July 1906, and Nova Gorica station opened on that same date. Nova Gorica itself is a planned town built after 1947, when the Paris Peace Treaty drew a new border that placed the traditional regional centre, Gorizia, outside Yugoslav territory. The station's main building faces Transalpina Square, which formed part of the border between Nova Gorica and Gorizia from 1947; a physical wall divided the square until Slovenia entered the Schengen area in 2007. Today the two cities jointly hold the European Capital of Culture title for 2025 — a journey that begins in a valley shaped by empire ends at a border once closed and now openly shared.