The geographic position of present-day Slovenia, squeezed between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea, has exposed this territory to the tides of history. It has always been a place of transition, a borderland and a crossroads, but also a bridge between different cultures, people, nations and states. Although small in size – the modern Slovene state measures just 20,000 km2 - four major European geographical regions meet in its territory: the Alps, which cover the north-west, the Pannonian Plain, also known as the Great Hungarian Plain, to the east, the Dinaric Alps, known also by the ancient toponym of the Karst (Kras), which covers the southern part of Slovene territory, and the Mediterranean, which, as the Adriatic, makes its most northerly encroachment into continental central Europe in the Gulf of Trieste.