This train route is being brought back after a century

Long-distance train travel frequently gives the impression of traveling through time. Passengers will now be able to travel back more than a century to the era of the Habsburg empire thanks to a new route that provides quick and direct connection between two European nations.

Thanks to a recently negotiated deal between state operators Trenitalia and SŽ Passenger Transport, also known as Slovenian Railways, a new high-speed route between Italy and Slovenia is currently in the works.

A Frecciarossa train will run eastwards from Milan to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in seven hours. It’ll pass through storied Italian cities Venice and Trieste, as well as making stops for some of Slovenia’s noted nature attractions, including Postojna Caves and Skocjan Caves, as well as Lipica, where the famous Lipizzaner horses have been bred since 1580.

Today, the horses with their “dancing” feet are best known for the displays at Vienna’s Spanish Riding School – which makes sense, since this part of the world, on the modern Slovenia-Italy border, used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire (or the Habsburg empire, before 1867).

In fact, the train itself should have a feeling of winding back the centuries to that earlier period. It is thought that this is the first train from Milan to Ljubljana since the empire was dissolved in 1918.

It’s also picking up the route of a night train from Budapest to Venice, which passed through Ljubljana, but finished in 2011.

Since 2018, there has been a regional train from Trieste to Ljubljana, but train staff of the two operators switch at the border at Villa Opicina station.