ABSTRACT
Relationships with the landscape are personal as well as cultural, perhaps never as tellingly as during conflict. Human movement across and through a wartime landscape is critical to survival as well as to victory or defeat, and the more extreme the terrain, the more difficult it can be to master. One of the most challenging of such landscapes is the Julian Alps in present-day Slovenia and Italy, which played a central role in the First World War between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian and German armies. The Julian Alps are part of the Ljubljana Gap area. Contrary to its literal meaning, it is not a single space but rather a network of valleys, basins, and passes that traverse the peaks, forming the last promontory of the high Alps and the lower Pre-Alpine Hills. Slovenians, the part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, appreciated the Alps in a similar way, and consequently, the Julian Alps became a symbolic battlefield.
