| The Entrance Foyer symbolically introduces visitors to the theme of the permanent exhibitions with maps that present Europe's World War I battlefields and the reshaped political borders at the end of the war, with flags, with portraits of soldiers of many nationalities, and with gravestones from the military cemeteries in the Upper Soča Valley region. |
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The Kobarid Rooms on the second floor of the museum (rooms 1, 2, and 3) have a parallel role and present a millennium of the turbulent history of Kobarid. Because of its location at the junction of the Soča and Nadiža valleys that link Friulia and Carinthia, Kobarid was the scene of numerous invasions and wars. In the past century, the flag flown over Kobarid's main square has changed some ten times. In these rooms, visitors find an abundance of information that is useful before exploring the Kobarid Historical Trail and the archeological site of the Late Roman settlement at Tonocov grad. |
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The Krn Room presents the initial assaults along the Soča River after Italy's entry into the war on May 24, 1915. Italian alpine troops achieved the first major
victory on the Soča Front with the capture of Mount Krn, when they wrested this 2245-meter peak from the hands of its Hungarian defenders on June 16, 1915.
The central exhibit of this room is the 1:1000 scale model of Mount Krn, Mount Batognica, and the neighbouring peaks. Many visitors study the model carefully before taking the tour of this highest part of the former battlefield or upon their return from this unforgettable open-air museum. |
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"There is no water. The terrain is very difficult, rocky..." Report of the Kratochwil unit, June 6, 1915 July 26, 1915 "Around seven we set out on the march toward the rocky crest of Mount Krn, which is now ours and because it is so soaked with blood is called Monte Rosso..." Virgilio Bonamore - 1915 diary |
| The White Room tells of the suffering of the soldiers in the mountains during the twenty-nine months of fighting on the Soča Front. Before their arrival on this battlefield, no one could imagine what awaited them. The Austro-Hungarian soldiers had experienced ten months on the plains of the Russian Front, while the majority of the Italian soldiers had never been on a battlefield before. The cruel environment of the karst mountains was combined with all the difficulties and victims claimed by winters with five, six, and more meters of snow, transport across the Julian Alps, . . . The war certainly did not end before the first winter, as the politicians and generals had initially promised. |
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August 2, 1915 "Today I continue my diary. During the four days I spent on Mount Batognica I couldn't write. In these days I experienced the most sorrowful horrors of this terrible war... On the 29th I was in the trenches for twenty-four hours squatting among the bodies of our boys and the enemy. The stench was unbearable... There is little water, and it stinks. They bring it in water bags. For two days I didn't drink or eat..." Virgilio Bonamore - 1915 diary |
| "Behind the lines"-magic words. Rest, sleep, water, food, the end of fear, recreation, . . . until the next return to the trenches. |
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The Hinterland Room illustrates how the area behind the lines of the Soča Front became a genuine anthill of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and workers scattered from Mount Rombon to the shores of the Bay of Trieste. Both armies required ever more fortified positions, roads, waterworks, cableways, hospitals, cemeteries, workshops, brothels,... |
| The story of the twenty-nine months of fighting for positions along the Soča River concludes in the Black Room, a room of warning. Portraits of soldiers at prayer before they were sent into battle, the gate of the Italian military prison, crucifixes and sculptures made by soldiers who mourned at the graves of their fallen comrades, a gun carriage amid the rubble of stone and twisted iron, and above them photographs of the horrors of war all tell of the senselessness that continued in the mountains around captured Mount Krn for a full twenty-eight months. All the subsequent assaults by Italian troops against the well-fortified Austro-Hungarian positions were unsuccessful. Their retreats to their starting position brought only reports of terrible losses on the battlefield. An Italian military court occupied the building that today houses the museum. |
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August 14, 1915 "...Then suddenly an unbelievable tragedy happened. Two Austrian guns we never dreamed were there opened a crossfire from the right and left right among the sharpshooters and mowed down everyone. The crossfire from machine-guns less than three hundred meters away killed dozens of men with every burst. We were somewhat higher and witnessed the terrible slaughter... August 15, 1915 "Only today could I grasp how immeasurable the disaster was. The 21st Battalion with the exception of fifty survivors is no more, the 7th and 9th divisions of the 36th Battalion have been halved, the 23rd Battalion has been decimated. A terrible debacle..." Virgilio Bonamore, 1915 diary |
"The Kobarid Museum is not a museum of war but of man and his distress. It is not a museum of victory and glory, of conquered and trampled flags, of conquering
and revenge, of revanchism and national pride. At the forefront are men who aloud or to themselves, for themselves or for their fellow sufferers, in various
languages of the world endlessly cried, "Damn all war!" In short, their curse captures the fundamental message of the Kobarid Museum, its success and justification
and the necessity that it lives and evolves."
Dr. Branko Marušič: Kobarid Museum - A Guide to the Museum |
| On the third floor, the final campaign of the Soča Front and the twelfth Soča battle, the counter-offensive by elite German and Austro-Hungarian units called the Battle of Kobarid is presented. This assault surprised the Italian command in the mountainous Upper Soča Valley region on October 24, 1917, and with new tactics of warfare achieved a victory that in the final year of the war pushed deep into Italian territory. In preparation for the offensive, the attackers had to invest extraordinary efforts, and in a little over a month 2400 trainloads of the necessary supplies and men were shipped to the foot of the mountains and then conveyed across the mountains to the Soča Valley. The scale of this task is illustrated on a 1:5000-scale relief model of the Upper Soča River region and large maps showing the movements and distribution of military units. |
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October 14 "After breakfast, I inspected the 119th and 121st regiments: excellent condition. Wonderful human material." September 26 (Kobilja glava, 1475 m) "When we reached the peak... we could observe from the heights the mountains occupied by the enemy... It was necessary to explain to our generals the aims, goals, and details of our plan. Everything proceeded excellently for us since the battlefield was spread below us like an enormous map." General Otto von Below, Commander, Austrian-German XIV Army, diary |
| The preparations for the battle and it course are documented with numerous photographs taken largely in the second half of October 1917 and during the first days of the fighting that present most comprehensively the events in the Bovec basin, including the German attack with gas shells on the troops of the Friuli Brigade, the breakthrough of the 12th Silesian Division from Tolmin toward Kobarid, and the movement of sublieutenant Erwin Rommel's unit across the slopes of the Kolovrat mountain range to the peaks of Mount Matajur. |
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"The entire horizon in the direction of Bovec was flashing, flooded with flares and the flames of firing. Into this fiery cataclysm like fiery meteors flew
the shells of great cannons positioned in the village of Soča. Each was accompanied by a fearful din." Josef Vachál "Maliř na frontě" (Paseka 1996) |
| A very detailed description of these events is presented in the twenty-two minute multivision program, which can be shown in four languages. The same applies for the audio presentation of a soldier's letter to his father from the "Italian Bunker" dug somewhere into the slopes of Mount Krn. His narrative and the sound background created by the then popular Friulian song "Stellutis alpinis" move visitors and inspire deep reflection on human stress and suffering that the soldiers on both sides of the front must have experienced. |
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"Dear Father,... I am no longer in Kras. As I already wrote Mother, I was at the rear of the front along the lower Soča. Only for the short time of ten days. Now I have been almost a month in the Upper Soča Valley region on those familiar highlands that we captured during the last offensive. In the battles, our brigade acquitted itself well..." |