Ajba
After having introduced house numbers in 1770, Ajba held the headquarters of the municipality, which was headed by a mayor and a dean. The municipality kept its independence up until 1928. Farming is still the most important way of life in Ajba, where small cattle breeding is the only possible type of stockbreeding to survive in this countryside. Small cattle breeding has a decisive influence on the reestablishment of the overgrowth equilibrium of the area. In Potravno there is Kogoj’s house. As early as the first half of 1600, books mention Peter Cigoj. On 14th October 1864, Štefan Kogoj was born in this house. He was the father of the composer Jurij Marij Kogoj.
Above the Ajba stream’s valley there are the churches of the apostles Peter and Paul ‘watching over’ usBoth are administered by the parish church of Ročinj. Saint Peter’s Church ‘belongs’ to the Potravno hamlet to the north-western part of Ajba. It is an important lookout in this part of the Soča Valley. The
Ajba stream (which may refer to the Lombardian expression for water) makes its way from the Karst to Pršin to the confluence into the River Soča, it beautifies many waterfalls and water channels, these
flowing from the
Savinka waterfall to the one situated next to the Držanov maln mill.
According to Gorazd Humar’s book, entitled Famous Bridges in Slovenia (Znameniti slovenski mostovi),
Napoleon’s Bridge is the most important: in this pick of the bunch were classified only three Napoleonic bridges, as well as one of Ajba. The bridge is important not only because of the time in which it was built and the way it was constructed, but also because it was the main route from the Soča Valley to Friuli
Venezia Giuglia in the time of the Venetian Republic.
According to the ZVNKD construction institution, three homes in Potravno are considered as building heritage because they have corridors in front of the facades, windows, front gates and cellars with arches.
On the stone front gate of Dolinc’s home there is an engraved date 1843. In the time of the Soča Front, in the Ajba stream’s Valley, the Italian army established one of the most important supply and operation bases. In the East, it was protected against the Austrians by
Saint Peter and Saint Paul’s mountain crest. That is why there were many caverns throughout the whole western part of the crest.
The Slovenian ancestors built 9 mills on the small Ajba stream and its subsidiaries.
The Prgon’s mill was the only one that ‘survived’ the destruction of two wars. Regarded as a technical heritage, it will remind us about the times in which the rural people lived on and survived on the goods that God had given them, and on the harvest of the fields.
The map
The map - cycle and walk tracks
