page_title: Karst Plateau
section_title: Language, culture and traditions
hierarchical_section_title: Karst Plateau / Language, culture and traditions
caption_attribution_description: English: Slovenian celebration in Basovizza, Trieste, in September 2010
context_page_description: The Karst Plateau or the Karst region, also locally called Karst, is a karst plateau region extending across the border of southwestern Slovenia and northeastern Italy.
  It lies between the Vipava Valley, the low hills surrounding the valley, the westernmost part of the Brkini Hills, northern Istria, and the Gulf of Trieste. The western edge of the plateau also marks the traditional ethnic border between Italians and Slovenes. The region gave its name to karst topography. For this reason, it is also referred to as the Classical Karst.
context_section_description: The vast majority of the inhabitants of the Karst Plateau are ethnic Slovenes. Traditionally, only the village of San Martino del Carso (in the municipality of Sagrado), has been inhabited by Friulian speakers, while all the rest of the region was almost entirely Slovene-speaking from the Middle Ages till the late 1940s and 1950s, when Istrian Italians fleeing from Yugoslavia were settled in Karst villages in the Province of Trieste, especially in the municipality of Duino. As a consequence, today an estimated one fifth of the population of the Karst Plateau is Italian speaking, while the rest is mostly Slovene speaking.
  The Slovenes in the region speak two closely related Slovene dialects, both belonging to the Littoral dialect group. In the southern part of the plateau (in the municipalities of Divača and Hrpelje-Kozina, and the southern part of the Municipality of Sežana, in the Italian municipality of Monrupino, and in most of the Slovene-speaking areas of the municipality of Trieste), the Inner Carniolan dialect is spoken. In the northern part (the northern part of the Municipality of Sežana, in the Slovenian municipalities of Komen and Miren-Kostanjevica, in the Italian municipalities of Sgonico, Duino-Aurisina and Doberdò del Lago, as well in some eastern suburbs of Trieste, like Barcola), the Karst dialect is spoken.
  The Karst is  renowned for its strong red wine, known as teran, prosciutto and its traditional cuisine, which is a mixture of Mediterranean and Central European cuisine. The traditionally produced Karst prosciutto, a sort of dry-cured ham, is protected at the European level.
caption: Traditional Karst folk costumes in a Slovenian commemorative celebration in Basovizza near Trieste
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