Trieste: The Departure from the Mitteleuropean Heart

It all begins in the heart of Trieste/Trst, in the early evening, when the city is still vibrant with life and the historic cafés exude that atmosphere that makes Trieste unique. Because Trieste is, before anything else, a crossroads: Italian, Slavic, Germanic, Jewish, Greek - a melting pot where for centuries different cultures have mixed and enriched each other, leaving an imprint that can be read in the architecture, in the surnames, in the flavours, in the languages that still intertwine in the streets of the centre. Here Joyce wrote the’Ulysses in the cafés of Via San Nicolò, Svevo invented The Conscience of Zeno, Saba kept his bookshop in Via San Nicolò - a city where literature is not museum heritage but air that you breathe.

The first kilometre at controlled speed runs through the streets of the historic centre - Piazza Unità d'Italia, the Hapsburg palaces, the lights reflecting on the water of the Grand Canal - in an urban prologue that no other trail race can boast. Trieste is not just the start: it is the first, unforgettable stretch of the route.

Simplified logistics: Heated space at the start, bag deposit at the start line and bib collection directly in Trieste. No transfer necessary: you arrive, you run, and the journey begins.

The Night Climb: Trieste at Feet, the Stars Above

Leaving the centre, you lengthen your stride along the 19th-century boulevards and climb into the urban parks that make Trieste one of the greenest cities in Italy - a peculiarity that surprises those who know it only as a seaside town. One crosses the Ferdinandeo Park, climbs the hills that form the natural amphitheatre on which the city lies, and the relationship between Trieste and nature is revealed in all its strength: the sea in front, the Karst behind, the sky above, and in between a city that has never ceased to be wild.

As you ascend, Trieste stretches out beneath your feet in a marvellous pattern of lights reflecting on the sea - a luminous nativity scene that widens with every metre of elevation gain, with the Victory Lighthouse and the Audace pier acting as cardinal points in the darkness. On clear winter nights, beyond the expanse of lights, you can make out the snowy silhouettes of the Julian Alps - and you can understand why those who live here say that in Trieste the sea and the mountains are one and the same.

Val Rosandra by Night: The Senses Awaken

Once you reach the Karst ridge, you descend into the Rosandra Valley/Dolina Glinščice: a wild valley, the only one in Italy with a stream flowing on the surface of the Karst, set in a nature reserve that holds a concentration of biodiversity rare in its size. Vertical walls of white limestone rise up to a height of three hundred metres - the same walls where in the 1930s Emilio Comici, the legendary mountaineer from Trieste and pioneer of the sixth degree, trained before his Dolomite exploits. Comici saw Val Rosandra as a perfect natural gym, and to this day, local climbers still climb those routes that bear his name.

In winter, the valley takes on an even more intense character: the torrent is swollen, the air is biting, ice forms on the rocks and the technical trails that run through it at night become challenging in a way that tests concentration and sure-footedness. One concentrates on one's senses - the sounds of the water flowing through the rocks, the scent of the damp earth, the chill of the winter air on one's skin - testing oneself and the darkness.

The Bagnoli main aid station: Hot Pizza in the Heart of the Night

The legendary main aid station at the Comunella in Bagnoli della Rosandra/Boljunec is transformed into a large refreshment area where hot pizzas served right at dinner time await. A moment of refreshment and sharing in the heart of the race, where the warmth of the oven and the warmth of the people come together in an energy that recharges legs and spirit.

The New Panoramic Route: Basovizza and the Path of Origins

From Basovizza/Bazovica, the old monotonous stretch of past editions has been replaced by a spectacular route that takes Sentiero CAI 1 in the direction of Sistiana - the same route of the very first editions of La Corsa della Bora, a return to the origins that has the flavour of a rediscovery. One runs with Trieste at one's feet - a carpet of lights pulsating in the night - and the Adriatic reflecting the moon on the horizon.

The route is entirely overlooked: to the right the illuminated city descends towards the sea, to the left on clear winter nights the snow-covered profiles of Monte Nevoso, Tricorno and the Julian Alps stand out, so clear that they seem just a stone's throw away. This is the stretch where the relationship between Trieste, the Karst and the mountains can be felt with the power of a blow to the chest - the same emotion that prompted the founders of the Corsa della Bora to choose this very trail for the first edition.

From the Opicina Obelisk to the Miramare Castle: The Gulf by Night

You reach the Obelisk of Opicina/Opčine, a historic viewpoint on the Karst terrace overlooking the entire Gulf. From here you do not take the famous Strada Napoleonica - the scenic promenade built in 1821 to link Opicina to Prosecco, a six-kilometre balcony suspended between the Karst ridge and the sea that is one of the most beautiful in Europe - but you do take a short stretch, just enough to savour the vertigo, before heading downhill through the Bovedo forest.

The Bovedo is a dense and craggy scrub of holm oaks, manna ashes and hornbeams that plunges from the Karst ridge down to the sea in a leap of almost three hundred metres: a vertical, damp and silent forest, where the light of the headlights is lost among the trunks and the sound of the wind at altitude gives way to the dripping of moisture among the leaves. The descent is swift and steep, and deposits the runners on the Barcola/Barkovlje promenade - the Trieste people's beach, deserted and surreal in the night.

We run towards the Miramare Castle by going up the Sissi Staircase - the monumental stone staircase that Empress Elisabeth of Austria used to climb to reach the castle grounds from the coastal paths. Sissi loved Trieste and Miramare deeply: she stayed there regularly, seeking in the sea and in nature that refuge from the rigidity of the Viennese court that was the guiding thread of her restless life. The Habsburg castle, commissioned by Archduke Maximilian and Princess Charlotte of Belgium, is a fairy-tale vision in the dark, with its illuminated white towers that seem to float between sea and sky.

The Contovello Ascent: Stone, Vineyards and the Scent of the Sea

From Miramare, one ascends to Contovello/Kontovel - a jewel of Karst stone houses perched on the cliffs, surrounded by the vine terraces where the legendary Karst wine is born. Here the soil is so stingy and the wind so strong that every bunch of grapes is an achievement - and the result is a wine of unparalleled character.

These steep hills between Contovello and Prosecco are the cradle of the world's most famous wine: the village of Prosecco, a few kilometres from here, gave its name to the wine of the same name before production moved to the Veneto region. But the Trieste Karst has maintained a wine identity all its own, concentrated on indigenous grape varieties that do not exist elsewhere: the Vitovska, mineral and savoury white that tastes of Karst stone and sea breeze; the Istrian Malvasia, fragrant and rounded; the Glera, the original Prosecco grape variety that still grows here on its land of origin. Wines of extreme terroir, children of the bora, the sun and a red earth rich in iron that barely covers the limestone rock.

The ascent through the narrow streets of the village, with the scent of the sea mingling with that of heated stone, is one of the most intimate and evocative passages of the entire race. You run between dry stone walls bordering centuries-old vineyards, with the Gulf widening behind you with every metre of altitude gained.

The Finale: Sentiero della Salvia, Vedetta Weiss and the Costa dei Barbari

From Santa Croce/Križ the trails of all La Corsa della Bora distances converge toward PortoPiccolo. For the Trieste Ultra it is the final stretch of a journey that started in the city, climbed the Carso, followed the coast and now returns to the sea where it all began. The last kilometres — the same as all the other distances — have a different taste: you have already been to places that those who started from PortoPiccolo have not seen.

From Santa Croce, take the Trail Tiziana Weiss, also called Sage Trail for the expanses of wild sage that perfume the air and grow luxuriantly among the stones of the Karst. The path is named after Tiziana Weiss, a young mountaineer from Trieste who lost her life at only twenty-six years of age in 1978 while descending the Pale di San Martino - a short but luminous life, consecrated to the mountains and nature, whose spirit lives on in this path suspended between sky and sea.

You run flat, elevated above the sea, on a natural terrace offering a total view of the Gulf of Trieste: from Punta Salvore to Istria, from the Miramare Castle to the Grado lagoon, with the infinite shades of sumac red, the shimmering white of the karst stone and the dark green of the juniper bushes. On clear bora days, the atmosphere is so transparent that the gaze is lost beyond the horizon.

It crosses the Fishermen's Path - one of the oldest paths in the Karst, where Slovenian fishermen of Aurisina/Nabrežina came down with their zoppoli (boats carved from a single pine trunk) to the small port of Canovella degli Zoppoli/Pri Čupah - and you reach the Vedetta Weiss, a panoramic stone terrace 159 metres above sea level, from which one can see Duino Castle to the north and the Istrian coastline to the south. At the foot of the lookout lies a bunker, a silent testimony to the Gladio organisation, which had a “hideout” here between 1963 and 1970.

The route continues through vineyards, karst heathland and pine and beech forests until it reaches the village of Borgo San Mauro - and from here, after many years, the final descent to PortoPiccolo passes again through the rocky Costa dei BarbariSheer cliffs overlooking crystal-clear water, coves of white pebbles and vegetation that in summer is perfumed with the scent of the Mediterranean maquis and in winter gives way to the saltiness that accompanies the last steps before the finish line.

The final dive towards the Bora Village in PortoPiccolo closes the circle: we started from the sea, crossed the vastness of the Karst plateau, and return to the sea.

Final Variation (in the dark)

This section is travelled at night, coming from Contovello. You can feel the crisp sea air in the dark air, the reflections of the lights of Trieste and the boats in the Gulf replace the daytime panorama. The Costa dei Barbari in the dark is an ancestral passage, where the sound of the sea beneath your feet is your only compass.