Mountain ranges / Karawanks / Gradišče nad Sotesko (Soteska)

Gradišče nad Sotesko (Soteska)

Country: Slovenia

Mountain range: Karawanks

Altitude: 724 m

Lat/Lon:

46,4194°N 14,112°E

Type: peak

Weather forecast:

Views: 2.386

Popularity: 30% (2373. place)

Number of pictures: 6

Number of trails: 1

Number of GPS tracks: 0

Description of peak:
Gradišče nad Sotesko (also Soteska) is a 724 m high hill located on the border between Koroška Bela and Potoki, in the municipality of Jesenice in Gorenjska. It is a less visible peak to the average eye, but in the distant past it played a much more important role for the surrounding settlers than it does today.
The name of the glacier tells us something about that. When the storage dam for the Moste power plant was not yet in place in the immediate vicinity of the hill below the southern slope, the Sava River flowed through a gorge in this area, from which part of the name has been preserved. In the Late Roman period (1st-4th centuries AD), the peak above the gorge, in connection with the higher mountain shelter on Ajdna, was a strategically important point of entry (exit) to the Upper Sava Valley, as the "via Chreinariorum" - the route of the Carniola people connecting Carniola, Carinthia and Friulian Carniola - ran in the immediate vicinity. To ensure that this late-Roman Gorenjska route and the settlement on Ajdna were properly protected and defended, a walled defensive military tower fortress or castle was built over the Sava gorge. Hence the second part of the glacial name Gradišče.
Today, on the top of the hill, we can find the ruins of the walls and certain terrain features that bear witness to the existence of the fortress in the distant past. From the top, which does not offer much of a view into the valley due to the forest, you can see the neighbouring Ajdna, and from the path you can look out over the Ljubljana basin as well as the Gornjesavska valley.
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