PortoPiccolo: The Ascent from the White Cliffs

The departure from Bora Village in PortoPiccolo is a breathtaking spectacle: the Adriatic Sea behind you, the white cliffs of the Karst escarpment in front of you. The first section is a steep but never technically difficult climb, a natural wall of limestone that takes you from sea level to the plateau trails in a few hundred metres. You climb at a steady pace, your breathing opening up and the sea widening beneath your feet with every step.

This year the start times have been extended from one to two hours to eliminate - or drastically reduce - delays in the narrowest sections. The result is a smoother start, where each runner finds his or her own rhythm from the very first metres without the frustration of the queue.

The Rilke Path: Poetry Terrace on the Adriatic

Once the cliffs are reached, the track stretches along the famous Rilke Path, the panoramic walkway that runs along the Duino Cliffs Nature Reserve connecting Sistiana/Sesljan to Duino/Devin. A little over two kilometres suspended between sky and sea, where the dazzling white of the limestone cliffs blends with the cobalt blue of the Adriatic and the deep green of the Mediterranean maquis - holm oaks, pines, junipers and the sumac that sets the landscape ablaze with red in autumn.

The trail alternates between very short technical sections and wide, flowing sections: the terrain is protected, not exposed, and the wooden railings along the ridge provide safety without detracting from the vertiginous view that embraces the entire Gulf of Trieste/Tržaški zaliv, from Punta Salvore in Istria to the Grado Lagoon, with the snow-covered Julian Alps as a backdrop on clear bora days.

It was here, on a furiously windy day in the winter of 1912, that Rainer Maria Rilke - guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle - heard from the wind the words that would give rise to the Duine Elegies, one of the absolute pinnacles of 20th century poetry: «Who, if I were to cry out, would hear me from the hosts of angels?». These crags are also the inspiration for the motto of La Corsa della Bora: being here is wonderful. (Rilke purists would object - the Elegies speak more of terrible angels than solar wonder - but anyone who runs along this path with the sea under their feet and the wind in their hair understands exactly what we mean).

Along the way, you will come across military posts from the Great War overlooking the sea, today the refuge of the peregrine falcon and the magnificent algiroide. Among the rocks grows the Karst cornflower, a rare flower that only lives on these cliffs. Halfway along the trail leaves the ridge and enters a fragrant pine forest before returning to the cliff line towards Duino Castle.

The Borgo di Duino: Between the Castle and the Pizza delle Cravatte Rosse

The route runs through the historic town of Duino/Devin, nestled between Mount Ermada and the white cliffs on the Adriatic. It runs past Duino Castle - the 15th-century residence of the Princes della Torre and Tasso, where Dante was a guest before Rilke, and where the terraces overlooking the sea guard centuries of history and poetry. Next to the ruins of the old castle, the silhouette of the Dama Bianca can be glimpsed, the rock in the likeness of a veiled woman who, according to legend, was a castellan turned to stone.

Passing through the picturesque Piazza del Castello is also the time for the day-only refreshment of the Cravatte Rosse: freshly baked pizza, smiles and the energy of the volunteers who have always been the soul of La Corsa della Bora. A place to take a break, have a hot bite to eat and start off again with your spirit as full as your legs.

Mount Ermada: Where the Karst Becomes a Mountain

Beyond Duino the terrain changes character. You leave the coastal cliffs and enter the heart of the plateau, where Mount Ermada - Grmada in Slovenian, 323 metres - dominates the Karst landscape like a sentinel between two worlds. The ascent is gentle and continuous, never brutal, through mixed pine and beech forests that alternate with clearings of bora-beaten moorland.

The summit ridge offers a well-balanced mix of athletic challenge and enjoyment of the panorama: gently descending stretches interspersed with short ascents on flowing paths, with views sweeping from the sea to the mountains. Mount Ermada was also the scene of bitter fighting during the Great War - its slopes still conceal trenches and fortifications of the Austro-Hungarian army - but today nature has healed those wounds and the green of the woods has replaced the stony ground of yesteryear.

The Medeazza Crossroads: Where Paths Separate

Beyond Mount Ermada, the territory opens out into a picturesque stretch of karst heathland dotted with terraced vineyards, dolines and drystone walls, until it reaches Medeazza/Medjavas - village of stone houses where the Italian Karst looks towards Slovenia.

Here the routes split: this is the most fascinating fork in La Corsa della Bora, where one branch heads towards the border paths and the village of San Pelagio/Šempolaj, while the other leaves Italy and enters Slovenia, passing through Jamiano/Jamlje e Doberdò/Doberdob along almost unexplored paths. After the refreshment stop in Medeazza - where the energy of the volunteers is already a bonus - each runner sets off on his or her own path towards the wildest heart of the Karst.

The Great War Lupinc Park: Memory between Trenches and Living Stone

In the heart of the Trieste Karst, surrounded by the vineyards of the village of Prepotto/Praprot, one enters the Lupinc Škaljunk Park - an open-air museum created by Danilo Lupinc on his own land to mark the centenary of the Great War. A place where memory intertwines with nature and stone tells stories of a century ago.

The path leads through restored trenches, dug into the limestone by Russian prisoners of war in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army. A stone plaque is dedicated to Danilo's grandfather, Anton Terčon, who fell in 1916, and to those prisoners who found fatigue, cold and a land far from home here. The stone cottages along the path were the shepherds' shelters from the sun and bad weather at the beginning of the 20th century - a Karst where daily life and war intertwined seamlessly.

We pass through the atmospheric Grotta Lesa - a natural cavity whose vault has collapsed to create a magical sinkhole, an enchanted clearing reached through a natural stone arch that seems to have been carved by a giant. Russian prisoners used to find refuge there after the days of excavation; today, light filters through the rock walls from above, creating an atmosphere suspended in time. A wooden staircase carved into the rock leads out of the cave and back into the vineyards.

Here, the Karst shows its most authentic face: inseparable history and nature, where the scars of war have been healed by the green woods and the patient work of those who still cultivate this land.

The Descent to Santa Croce: The Rediscovered Sea

Leaving Lupinc Park, the route begins its descent towards the sea. It is a section that takes your breath away - literally and metaphorically - as the terrain tilts towards the Adriatic and the horizon opens up with a violence of beauty that is impossible to get used to.

The route runs towards Santa Croce/Križ - a picturesque Karst village of narrow stone streets and houses perched on the cliffs, once a village of Slovenian fishermen who climbed from the coast along the Sentiero della Salvia (Sage Trail) to the lookouts from which they spotted schools of tuna in the Gulf. The Fishing Museum in Santa Croce recounts this thousand-year-old tradition, where the slaughter of tuna was a collective ritual in which the entire village participated - men, women and children - because the survival of the community depended on those fish.

The last few kilometres overlooking the sea offer a view that sweeps from the Slovenian coast to the Grado lagoon, with Trieste stretching along its gulf in the distance. The sun (or the stars, for those arriving at night) illuminates the white cliffs, the blue of the water and the dark green of the maritime pines in a picture that no photograph can really render.

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

This year, from the village of Santa Croce/Križ, all the routes of La Corsa della Bora, which in past editions were divided, now merge into a single, spectacular final stretch along the paths between Santa Croce and PortoPiccolo. Whether you arrive from the Karst in broad daylight or from the Trieste night with legs from a long crossing, the last kilometres are the same for everyone - and they are unforgettable.

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.