Pivka, home of the military museum and seventeen intermittent lakes

Seventeen lakes that come and go

What surprises me most about Pivka is its lakes. The valley’s geology and very uneven rainfall make the groundwater rise and fall sharply, and when it is high up to seventeen intermittent lakes form. Since 2014 they have been protected as a landscape park. The lakes’ ecomuseum, reopened on 3 February 2024, explains it with an interactive exhibition, a wheel you turn to see how they form and a closing film. From there you can go with a guide to Petelinje and Palško lakes.

The Park of Military History

The village’s big sight is the Park of Military History, in the old barracks built by Italy around 1930 and used by the Yugoslav army until 1991. It is the largest museum complex in Slovenia, with the exhibition on independence, tanks and aircraft and a submarine you can go inside. From the park, a one-hour trail also leads to the underground Alpine Wall fort on Primož Hill, the command post for the interwar Italian forts around Pivka, and a circular route of about four hours takes in Šilentabor and the village of Narin.

Getting to Pivka by car or train

By car, Pivka is about 60 km from Ljubljana on the coast motorway, leaving at Postojna. By train there is a direct line from Ljubljana taking an hour and a half, and also from Koper and Rijeka. From the station you can walk to the military museum by following footprints painted on the pavement. Further south lies Ilirska Bistrica, and everything else in the region is in Notranjska.

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Bears, wolves and lynx

In the Krpan House is the Dina centre, devoted to the large carnivores of the Dinaric mountains. At 10 interactive stations, with virtual and augmented reality, you discover how the bear, the wolf and the lynx perceive the world, and how people can live alongside them. The visit takes about two hours, and the centre also aims to reduce conflicts between people and large carnivores in the area shared by Slovenia and Croatia.

A village next to Postojna

Pivka has 2,246 people and heads a municipality of 6,168 covering 223.3 km². It lies less than ten minutes’ drive from Postojna, on the way to Ilirska Bistrica and Rijeka. The upper Pivka valley is a mosaic of wet and dry meadows, hedgerows and woods, the landscape its landscape park sets out to protect.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Pivka for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.