How big Slovenia is, in official figures

How big is Slovenia?

The government and SURS agree on 20,271 km². That area is ringed by 1,322 km of land borders, 672 with Croatia, 318 with Austria, 232 with Italy and 100 with Hungary, and its whole seafront is a 47 km strip facing Trieste. The Tourist Board gives just over 42 km of coastline on one of its pages, but I go with the government figure. To see how it all fits together, look at the map of Slovenia.

What that size means when travelling

My advice is not to trust the kilometres. As the crow flies everything looks close, but in the mountains every journey stretches, and a mountain pass like Vršič is nobody’s motorway. That’s why I plan a week for the western half, with Ljubljana, the lakes, the Karst and the coast, and leave the east for another time. In winter, winter equipment is also compulsory from 15 November to 15 March, and traffic keeps right, something to bear in mind on hairpins if you’ve just flown in from the UK.

Mountains, rivers and lakes

The roof of the country is Triglav, at 2,864 metres, in the Julian Alps. The longest river is the Sava, at 221 km. With lakes you need to watch the figures. The largest is Cerknica, at 26 km², but it’s intermittent; the largest permanent natural lake is Bohinj, according to the Tourist Board, and the largest artificial one is Lake Ptuj. Underground, Postojna Cave runs for 19.5 km and is the longest show cave in the country, while the Škocjan Caves, on UNESCO’s list since 1986, cover a protected area of 413 hectares.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Bohinj on Expedia and filter by area before price.

Forest and protected areas

What stands out is the green. The government says more than half the country is forest and more than a third falls within the Natura 2000 network; the Tourist Board puts it at 60%. There is a single national park, Triglav, at 83,982 hectares and the largest protected area, plus three regional parks and 47 landscape parks. I rank them in Slovenia’s nature parks.

Big municipalities and tiny ones

Inside, the 212 municipalities are very uneven. Kočevje covers 555.6 km² and Ilirska Bistrica 479.9, while Ankaran is just 8.1. In mountain municipalities such as Tolmin (382.2 km²) or Bovec (367.4), the area is large and the population thin. The full table is in the municipalities of Slovenia. How people are spread across that territory is in Slovenia population.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Bohinj and pick one that fits your day.

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Bohinj on Booking.com and filter by area before price.