INVISIBLE MONUMENTS

Overlooked Monuments is an epic journey along abandoned, derelict or forgotten structures built during one of the greatest engineering feats from the end of the 19th century, the King's Imperial South Railway from Ljubljana to Trieste. At the same time, it is a delicate, arabesque and lyrical journey through the lens of a camera into the times of Mitteleuropa from the end of the 19th century, which has disappeared since then.

Overlooked Monuments is a documentary poem about time, disappearance and memory.

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century brought the railway into Slovene territories, too. The construction of the King's Imperial South National Railway was one of the greatest civil engineering feats of the end of the 19th century. Its engineers and builders had to overcome numerous unforeseen hurdles, including the key one which seemed insurmountable at the time: a complete lack of water for the steam engines in a desert-like Karst region.

First problems arose immediately at the start, in the Ljubljana Marshes where the soft and unstable terrain had to be consolidated. For ten years, they had to "sink" rocks weighing two tonnes on average into the ground on a daily basis. Then they had to raise the railway from the Ljubljana Marshes to the Karst Platau. The result of this masterfully planned project was the 561 metres long Borovnica Viaduct. During the seven years of construction, they hammered 4,000 oak pylons into the soft marshy ground. The viaduct was for the next ten years the longest stone bridge in Europe!
The lack of water on the then completely barren, desert-like and uninhabited Karst region remained an insurmountable hurdle, until they accidentally discovered a rich water source deep in the Karst wilderness, which then enabled them to build one of the largest, encompassing almost 40 kilometres long water distribution system in Europe. Through a system of invisible underground feeding pools, it supplied water for all the railway stations from Rakek to Trieste.
Complications did not end even when the railway was completed in 1857, when the first train was already on its way to Trieste. The weather conditions in Karst were so severe that the strong gusty wind overturned the train. But the worst of all were the several metres high snow drifts. At first they protected the railway with special wooden barriers. Later they build high stone walls. This vast wall system still looks impressive today, and can be perceived as a Slovene version of the Great Wall of China!