You might not believe it, but the closest part of Mediterranean coast to Lipizzaner Lodge as the crow flies is just 25km away on the Italian, not Slovenian Adriatic! 

Yep, it takes less than 30 minutes to reach the Italian limestone Karst cliffs from the Lodge and there are lots of other fab places we will also tell you about here, perhaps unexpected options for you to have a fantastic daytrip adventure by the Italian coast!

The focus of your day could well be this amazing cliff top walk between Sistiana and Duino, but we will also mention some other Secret Places to Visit that you could so easily combine into your day out to add a bit of Italian adventure to your Green Slovenian holiday..

We sincerely hope seeing how beautiful & safe this walk is in photos will help persuade you give it a go..

Where is this Italian Cliff Top Walk?

These Adriatic cliffs form the back drop to the old Slovenian (now in Italy) city of Trieste and are some of the highest in the Mediterranean.. There is a fabulous cliff path running most of the way between the little villages of Duino and Sistiana, with amazing views..

Duino has an absolutely fantastic castle sitting on top of the cliffs and Sistiana is more of a seaside harbour location with a camp site, big car park and long pebble beach..

Rocktastic vista points all along the cliff..

How to do the Hike..

This is a "There & Back Walk", about an hour or so there and an hour or so back, so you will first need to decide where to park and start the walk.. Duino or Sistiana..

We mentioned the big car park by the sea in Sistiana, which can get very busy in the high summer, so if you do want to start from sea level, our advice would be to arrive here early or try to find a spot somewhere above the cliff up in the town of Sistiana, (but then you have to walk down to the sea, so hardly worth it)..

Fab view of the bay and large campsite without campers in Oct..

Our preference for any time of year would be to go from Duino, which is a sleepy cliff top village just 40 mins direct from the Lodge and find a free parking space in one of the side streets next to the castle.

You could then decide whether to tour the castle first or later or not at all, but we also strongly advise visiting it Inside & Out and we wrote a seperate Secret Places article on Dunio Castle, cos it is so unexpectedley good, with fantastic views and a few secret surprises!

Seriously consider visiting Duino Castle for a few hours, it has a few really cool secrets..

This is a well trodden cliff path and some of the stones and rocks up here are even shiny from the hundreds of years of people walking on them..

It is easy to find as you are basically walking along a cliff, but when you get up here and see the spectacular views and the surprising amount of green vegetation with good safety barriers, anyone with any worries or fears of height will be completely reassured..

Parts of the path are like an art gallery for rocks..

Hiking from Duino to Sistiana & Back Again..

To get to the entrance, head away from the castle just a bit, Trieste direction and there is a little private looking mini park next to a private universtity with a few signs for the walk.

Once you find this it is all about hugging the cliff and following the path along, ducking in and out of rocky bits, green bits and some spectacular view points, which are converted WW1 look out posts..

At NO STAGE along the walk do you need to take any risks, so if it feels a bit dodgy or you end up in the thick trees away from the cliff, then you have gone the wrong way, but easy to regain the path.

Steps up to one of the fab WW1 lookout points along the cliff..

Our photos here are from our last time doing this hike in October and we were pleasantly surprised how green and colourful everything was along here, with plenty of cliff flowers swaying around in the sea breeze.

As you progress, the things that really stick out along this cliff and make this walk unique are the views back to the castle, the Adriatic vegetation, the solid rock bunkers & look out posts and of course the fantastic sea vistas..

It is very beautiful how the Karst limestone rock merges with the vegetation and offers you sharp and twisted stones to walk & scramble over with dramatic holes and fissures creating stunning vases for the green nature..

Typical crazy frog Karst rock scene, just to the side of the path..

As the castle becomes ever smaller in your rear view mirror, the bay of Sistiana will come into view ahead and then below and there is one cafe with a cliff terrace here for you to sip a capuccino and enjoy the views.

The final part of the cliff walk is next to a caravan site, (no comment) with gargantuan views down the huge rock face below over Sistiana harbour, more camping pitches and a long narrow car park next to the harbour , which is what you are aiming for..

But this is where the cliff path ends and a new kinda adventure starts and you pop out by a very small car park and a Tourist Info building.

Perfect spot for a cafe stop just before you leave the main cliff path..

There is a way to scramble throught forest down to the bay below, but it is actually quicker and much safer to walk a little into the small cliff top town centre of Sistiana and then hang a right down some steps through a few mini parks, criss crossing the main curvy road that goes down steeply from the town to the bay and then popping out into the car park.

It would be totally tempting to just walk down the road after the Tourist Info centre BUT it does not have any pavements and is narrow, so it really is better to hang a left and sidestep into the town, walking along a long raised pavement into the town and go down from there..

This is a KEY POINT, go LEFT here into Sistiana town centre, if you follow the road here it is steep and no pavement..

It does feel a bit wierd leaving the beautiful cliff views for a busy main road, but that is all that is on offer for just 5% of this walk, so suck it and see!

Once you leave the town and head down the steep steps through tree & bamboo lined little parklets down to the sea, there is one final zebra crossing to go over and then you literally pop out in the harbour car park.. You made it!

Go down the bamboo steps from Sistiana towards the sea..

You are greeted by a few fast food joints and cafes and you can walk across to the rock lined harbour for stunning views up to the cliffs.. where you just stood and the castle sitting pretty in the far distance..

It is very interesting for guests to see the differences between the Italian, Slovenian and Croatian coasts, when they are EXACTLY the same coast, but with very different atmospheres.. so here in Italy for example, the seaside is often monetised and you have to pay rent for the pristinely kept beaches with perfectly lined deckchairs and umbrellas..

this is the Sistiana harbourside car park, gets busy in the summer..

There is indeed a beautiful beach on the other side of the harbour at Sistiana and some kind of club there, so we suspect you would need to pay something to use the beach, which might be something you want to do.

There are more restaurants here and bars and for us it would be enough to maybe eat or drink something Italian style and then head back, but you could easily spend the rest of the day here swimming and relaxing. 

The walk back is steepest now up into Sistiana and then the bulk of your return is flat, in the fresh calm embrace of the cliff.

Stunning view up from Sistiana bay to where you were standing..

Other Fab Places to see around Sistiana to make an amazing Daytrip..

There are probabaly 2 to 3 days of stuff you could get up to in this mini region not far from this cliff walk, but you will probubbly only have a day, so choices will need to be made and logistics planned sensibly..

You could easily spend the whole day enjoying Duino Castle, doing the cliff walk, hanging out in Sistiana and eating somewhere nice in the Italian / Slovenian hills on the way back to the Lodge.

Rock defences at Sistiana harbour, long pebble beach to the left..

Equally, the cliff hike could be completed in half a day, so here are JUST SOME of the other amazing activities you could do..

All these Italian towns & cities of Trieste, Muggia, Palmanova & Aquilea are near by and possible buddy destinations..

Towards Trieste at the base of this same huge Adriatic cliff is another fantastic castle, Miramare, with even better gardens and on the way home the little village of Prosecco sits on top of the cliff between Sistiana and Green Slovenia..

Like a path on the moon with great views..

We know about a Prosecco wine maker there and it is on our list to go see her!

A little further away direction Venice, (1hr 50 from the Lodge) is the classy seaside town of Grado (1 hr, 10 from the Lodge) with a huge regional nature park on the way, by the sea..

And if you want to see another enormous cave over the Italian border called Grotte Gigante with 500 steps down into an enormous cavern, then this is only 35 mins direct to the Lodge..

This is where the cliff path walk starts in Duino.. about 400m from the castle

Indeed it takes a little more than 20 mins to first zip over the non existent Schengen border at a lovely little old Slovenian town called Opcina, which is the gateway to this section of rocky Italian coast and a very nice place to find a restaurant or cafe on the way to Trieste or any of these other little treasures..

We heard there is a lovely walk down from Opcina all the way down to Miramare castle on the coast and another pretty fishing village along the coast, not too far from Malfalcone, near the airport, so we cannot wait to try them both..

We also want to visit the Isonzo delta, which is where the Slovenian Soca river meets the sea in Italy and we also heard about a really great cycle path along an old railway line from Kozina in Slovenia all the way down to Trieste!

Vista out towards Grado, direction Venice..

So there are plenty more unexpected Green adventures and places even for us to still find and it is always a pleasure to go explore these new places.. especially outside the main holiday season when we can choose to go!

Imagine a time when our grandparents or great grandparents were born and this entire, beautiful section of coastline was Slovenian with the castles built in Austro-Hungarian Empire times.. so nowadays, from a tourist point of view, expect to see all this Roman, Venetian, Austrian and Slovenian culture.. but now with a strong Italian flavour.. Now that is Tourism with a capital T, folks!