If you’re somewhere near Duino on a pleasant sunny day, why not stop for a stroll amidst the green of the vegetation and the blue waters of the Timavo?

The Timavo is a very unusual river: it actually rises in Slovenia and flows for about 50 kilometres before diving underground at the caves of Škocjanske jame before re-emerging at San Giovanni al Timavo west of Trieste.

From the Strada Statale 14 you can easily reach the free parking area where you can leave the car and step into the atmospheric woody area to observe this fascinating karst phenomenon.

As soon as you arrive, you will notice the majestic church of  San Giovanni in Tuba, one of the oldest in the whole region, and if you are lucky enough to find it open it is worth visiting the interior and examining the apse, which still has the original paved mosaic of the early Christian Basilica of the 5th century!

Continuing the walk outside, you arrive within metres at the banks of the Timavo which emerges in a rush from the ground in several points and runs through a series of weirs and canals in a mass of white water on its short journey to the Adriatic Sea. One can often come across frogs, ducks, and swans, which frequent these waters undisturbed, in the midst of the cypresses, willows and poplars that give the area an almost enchanted atmosphere.

Returning back to the car, on a rocky spur by the road, you may notice two bronze wolves... this is the moving monument to the “Lupi di Toscana” (“Wolves of Tuscany”), and infantry regiment that fought valiantly here in the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo during the Great War. A monument that helps keep alive the memory of the tragic past in these wonderful places.