Santa Croce and Aurisina

Santa Croce (Slovene: Križ) is an ancient fishing village overlooking the Gulf of Trieste/Tržaški zaliv, about 200 metres above sea level on the edge of the Trieste Karst, between Prosecco and Aurisina along Provincial Road No. 1; it is the district of Trieste furthest from the city centre. Its houses huddle around small inner courtyards sheltered from the bora, with decorated stone doorways and narrow lanes that often leave no room for cars.

Aurisina (Slovene: Nabrežina) is, together with Duino, one of the two main villages in the Municipality of Duino Aurisina/Devin Nabrežina, and is also home to its town hall (in the hamlet of Aurisina Cave). Santa Croce, on the other hand, comes under the Municipality of Trieste: the two villages belong to separate municipalities and are brought together on this page because they sit side by side on the same Karst edge and are linked by the same trail.

The two villages are linked by the Sentiero Tiziana Weiss, also known as Sentiero della Salvia — the same trail that the longer Corsa della Bora races follow on the stretch towards the Costa dei Barbari (see the dedicated page Costa dei Barbari).

What to see and why it’s special

Santa Croce, the village of the “tonnaroti”. Until a few generations ago, Santa Croce was a village of fishermen who specialised in catching tuna with a unique technique: lookouts posted high on the Karst edge watched for the shoals, which gave themselves away by the glint of their scales, and signalled their arrival to the fishermen, who hurried down to the sea for the mattanza — a communal ritual in which men, women and children all took part, and part of how the village made its living. The practice survived until the last century, and it lives on in the Trieste Coast Fishing Museum (Località S. Croce 61, opened on 25 September 2016), which displays tools, nets and documents from the fishing tradition of the Slovene communities along the coast between Trieste and the mouths of the Timavo. Open at weekends from April to November, and for groups by appointment — check the museum’s official website for current opening times.

A boat that came from Russia. Among the curiosities of the local fishing tradition is the čupa, a boat of Russian origin hollowed out of a single tree trunk, used in this very area until the mid-20th century (the last surviving example, which had to be hauled ashore every day because there were so few harbours between Trieste and Duino, is now kept at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana).

The churches and the village festival. Santa Croce is home to the Church of the Invention of the Holy Cross (16th–18th centuries) and the small church of San Rocco (17th century). Every 29 June the village celebrates the feast of Saints Peter and Paul with processions in folk costume, and in summer there is the traditional football match that symbolically splits the village into two halves.

The Vedetta Liburnia. Just outside Aurisina, on the ridge between Monte Berciza and Monte Babiza (179 m), stands this cylindrical stone tower, built in 1854–56 to a design by the Viennese engineer Karl Junker — the same architect behind Miramare Castle. It served as the standpipe tower of the Aurisina aqueduct, keeping up the water pressure on the supply to Trieste. Today it is closed to visitors — you can’t go up it — but it remains strikingly evocative: it seems to rise out of nowhere from the dense scrub around it, an unexpected silhouette for anyone walking in the area.

Aurisina, two thousand years of quarrying. The Aurisina quarries have been worked without a break since the 1st century BC: the limestone extracted here, in its various types (Fiorita, Granitello, Lumachella, Chiara and others), has been used for Aquileia and Roman Tergeste, for Theodoric’s Mausoleum in Ravenna (c. AD 520) and, centuries later, in the Habsburg era, for the Neue Burg of the Hofburg (1881–1913) and the Parliament Building (1874–1883, over 6,000 tonnes of stone for columns and cladding), both in Vienna. In Trieste the same stone faces Miramare Castle, the Verdi Theatre, the Revoltella Museum and the Central Station; more recently it was also chosen for Milan Central Station (38,000 tonnes) and for Line 3 of the Milan metro. The Kamen Museum (Museo Diffuso delle Cave e della Pietra di Aurisina, the museum of Aurisina’s quarries and stone, at Aurisina Cave 25) runs guided tours of the Roman Quarry and offers five numbered “Stone Trails” (Vie della Pietra), routes through the area’s quarries, hill forts, caves and kilns — visits by booking only; details on the museum’s official website.

A historic railway junction. Aurisina is also home to Bivio d’Aurisina station, open since 1860, where the line to Venice/Udine splits from the line to Villa Opicina and on to Ljubljana — more a practical detail for anyone travelling by train than a tourist attraction in its own right.

How to get there

By bus. City bus line 44 run by Trieste Trasporti, from Piazza Oberdan to Duino, with stops at Santa Croce/Križ and Aurisina/Nabrežina (the same line mentioned on the page Duino and the Sentiero Rilke).

By car. Provincial Road No. 1 (Trieste–Prosecco–Santa Croce–Aurisina–Duino); the Duino Aurisina town hall is right in Aurisina Cave.

By train. Aurisina/Bivio d’Aurisina station, on the Trieste–Villa Opicina and Venice–Trieste lines — especially handy if you’re coming from outside the region.

On foot, between the two villages. The Sentiero Tiziana Weiss/Sentiero della Salvia links Santa Croce and Aurisina along the Karst edge — the same stretch that the long races of the Corsa della Bora cover on their way to the Costa dei Barbari before the return to PortoPiccolo.

Santa Croce and Aurisina in the Corsa della Bora

Santa Croce is a named waypoint — refreshment point and time barrier — in 3 of the 7 races. Aurisina, on the other hand, is not a stop on any course: the link is indirect, via the Sentiero Tiziana Weiss/Sentiero della Salvia, the trail that joins Santa Croce to Aurisina and that the races take straight after Santa Croce.

Santa Croce is a turning point. For S1 Borderless Trail, S1 TransKarst Ultra and S1 Bora Ultra is where the sea comes back into view after the inland stretch across the Karst, in a village once home to Slovene fishermen who climbed up from the coast along the Sentiero della Salvia to watch for shoals of tuna. From here on, for all three races, the course is at its most runnable — the place to make up time against the time barriers.

A race with no formal Santa Croce stop. The S1 Trieste Ultra (61.2 km) has no “Santa Croce” refreshment point or time barrier in the official table: its last checkpoint is Contovello (km 46.7), after which the course continues towards the Sentiero Tiziana Weiss and the Costa dei Barbari.

Aurisina is not on any of the courses. The village is not a stop on any race. The link is geographical: the two villages share the same trail and lie in neighbouring municipalities. If you want to watch the races go by, head to Santa Croce, not Aurisina.

An experience to enjoy beyond race weekend too

A walk that brings sport and history together: follow the Sentiero Tiziana Weiss/Sentiero della Salvia from Santa Croce to Aurisina (or the other way round), the same stretch of Karst edge crossed by the long races of the Corsa della Bora, with views over the gulf all the way. On a weekend with more time to spare, add the Fishing Museum in Santa Croce for the story of the local tuna fishermen, and a guided tour of the Roman Quarry with the Kamen Museum in Aurisina to find out where the white stone you see all along the course, from Duino to PortoPiccolo, comes from (see also Duino and the Sentiero Rilke and PortoPiccolo and Sistiana Bay). Spring and autumn remain the best times to go, when the trail is quieter and the low, raking light brings out the view over the gulf.

For the final stretch to the sea, see also Costa dei Barbari; to round off your walk at an osmiza, see also The osmize of the Karst; for a full, year-round overview of the trails of the Trieste Karst, see also Trail running in Trieste and on the Karst.