Bovec

Bovec is a town in Slovenia's Littoral region, close to the Italian border, seat of the Municipality of Bovec, with a 2025 population of 1,507 spread through the Bovec Basin of the upper Soca River valley beneath Mount Kanin in the Julian Alps. The area was the site of the Battles of the Isonzo, fought between Austro-Hungarian and Italian forces from June 1915 to November 1917, and a local military cemetery holds more than 600 graves from the fighting; between 1922 and 1943 Bovec's Slovene-speaking population was subject to forced Italianization under Italian Fascist rule before the town became part of Yugoslavia in 1947 and independent Slovenia in 1991. Its economy today rests largely on outdoor tourism, including kayaking and rafting on the Soca River.