Ljubka Trail – A Cross-Border Cultural and Tourist Route
Ljubka Trail – A Cross-Border Cultural and Tourist Route Dedicated to Ljubka Šorli and the Women Writers of the Gorizia Region
Ljubka Trail, a cross-border literary route celebrating poetry and equality, is a project of the Forum of Slavic Cultures and the Lojze Bratuž Cultural Centre. It brings together two major European initiatives: the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe and the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025 Nova Gorica–Gorizia.
The trail follows the life, artistic legacy and historical paths of the poetess Ljubka Šorli, as well as other women writers who left a lasting mark on the Gorizia region. Some are well known, while others remain largely undiscovered, although they lived and created in this area. The route also highlights the role and representation of women in society while uncovering lesser-known chapters of regional history.
Visitors are guided along the writers' lives and literary landscapes across both sides of the border, reaching as far as Tolmin, where Ljubka Šorli was born and spent her childhood. This freely accessible thematic cultural trail forms part of the extensive international network of the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe.
The project was conceived as a cross-border initiative because of its central theme: Ljubka Šorli and the women writers of the Gorizia region. Born in Tolmin, Ljubka Šorli spent much of her childhood there before moving to Gorizia, where she lived for the rest of her life and became one of the leading cultural figures of the Slovenian minority in Italy. Her life and poetry bridge both sides of the border, as reflected in the titles of her poetry collections Poems of Gorizia and Poems of Tolmin.
In addition to Ljubka Šorli, the trail features stops dedicated to Alma Maksimiljana Karlin, Zofka Kveder, Marica Nadlišek Bartol, Pavlina Pajk, Gizela Bellinger Ferjančič, Maria von Egger, Mari von Berks and Anica Žemlja.
The Forum of Slavic Cultures (FSK) is the founder and initiator of the Women Writers' Route, a cultural tourism project that evolved into a certified cultural route. In 2022, it received the prestigious Council of Europe Cultural Route certification. The route brings together 20 cultural institutions and local communities from six countries and is dedicated to 14 women writers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a period when women increasingly entered public life. Alongside celebrating their literary achievements, the route also commemorates their struggle for equality and for a stronger role for women in society.
The Lojze Bratuž Cultural Centre is an important cultural hub for the wider Gorizia region. For more than sixty years, it has welcomed a broad range of cultural activities, including music, theatre, exhibitions and other artistic and social programmes. Since its establishment, the Centre has served as a meeting place for different languages and cultures, actively fostering cross-border cooperation while preserving national, linguistic and cultural identities. Special attention is devoted to young people and their active involvement in cultural life.
The project also involved the project team of the Research Centre for the Humanities at the University of Nova Gorica, which has already organised scholarly symposia dedicated to two authors featured on the Ljubka Trail: Ljubka Šorli and Pavlina Pajk. In fact, the idea for the Ljubka Trail grew out of the literary walk Crossing Borders with Courage, organised by the Research Centre.
As part of the project, the partners designed and marked the Ljubka Trail, published a trail map, organised two major choral concerts featuring musical settings of Ljubka Šorli's poetry, provided training programmes for tourist guides and teachers, organised numerous cultural events and a conference on cultural routes, and published the trilingual anthology of women writers and poets from the Gorizia region entitled Boundlessly Bold.
This project is funded by the European Union through the GO! 2025 Small Project Fund under the Interreg VI-A Italy–Slovenia 2021–2027 Programme, managed by the EGTC GO.