Alpine Slavs, ancestors of the present-day Slovenes, settled the area in the 7th century. In the
Middle Ages, the villages belonged to the
Lombard Kingdom, the
Frankish Empire, and finally to the
Patriarchate of Aquileia. Between 1420 and 1797, Livek belonged to the
Republic of Venice and was part of the historical region known as
Venetian Slovenia. In 1797, it was acquired by the
Habsburg monarchy. Already in 1805, it was included in the
Napoleonic
Kingdom of Italy. In 1813 it was regained by the
Austrians. Although the vast majority of the region of
Venetian Slovenia was included in Austrian
Lombardy-Venetia, Livek was placed in the administrative region known as the
Kingdom of Illyria. In 1849, it became part of the
Austrian Littoral. In 1866, when the
Veneto and
Friuli regions were acquired by
Italy, Livek remained in the
Austrian Empire, becoming a border village. Livek became known during
World War I, when it became an important strategic location during the
Battle of Caporetto towards the end of 1917. A unit of the German Army commanded by
Erwin Rommel, who later became a
German Field Marshal in
World War II, seized the village and used it as a base from where they took the strategically crucial
Mount Matajur. Rommel's small unit managed to defeat the Italian defense that numbered 150 officers, 9,000 men, and 81 pieces of artillery. He received
Prussia's highest medal, the
Pour le Mérite, for this act and described it and his route to Matajur via Livek in his 1937 book
Infanterie greift an (Infantry Attacks). ==References==