Triglav

Where is Triglav?

Triglav is part of the Julian Alps.

You will find it in: Slovenia.

Summit: 46.378° N, 13.837° E

The story behind it

The oldest recorded climb dates from 1778, when four men from the valleys below reached the top: the surgeon Lovrenc Willomitzer, the chamois hunter Štefan Rožič and the miners Luka Korošec and Matevž Kos. The name comes from an old Slavic word meaning three-head, because from the Upper Carniola side the mountain really does show three bumps at once. In April 1895 a village priest named Jakob Aljaž bought the summit from his municipality for a single florin so that he could build on it. That August, four workers assembled the Aljaž Tower up there in only five hours: a cylinder of galvanised sheet steel just 1.90 metres high and 1.25 metres across, carried up in pieces on people's backs, meant as a shelter from storms. It carried the first Slovene inscription on the mountain, and in 1999 the little tower was declared a cultural monument of national importance. Slovenes often say that you are not a true Slovene until you have stood on Triglav, a saying repeated in guidebooks and tourism texts rather than written in any law; a former president once called the climb a duty for every Slovene. Sources give the height as 2 864 metres or, measured more precisely, 2863.65 metres, so do not be surprised if a sign says something slightly different.

Find it on the globe

Triglav is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.