Julius Kugy (19 July 1858 – 5 February 1944) was a mountaineer, writer, botanist, humanist, lawyer and officer of Slovenian descent.

He opposed competing nationalist ideologies in the Alpe-Adria region, insisting on the need of peaceful co-existence among Slovene, Italian and German peoples.

[1] Kugy was educated in a multi-lingual environment: from an early age he was fluent in three of the four languages of his native Gorizia and Gradisca region: Italian, German, and Friulian.

One of the riddles he tried to solve was a mysterious plant species Scabiosa trenta, described by Belsazar Hacquet and later proven by Anton Kerner von Marilaun to be a specimen of the already known Cephalaria leucantha.

His neo-Romantic style, which merged scientific and naturalist descriptions of nature and popular customs with a highly personalized reflections, influenced several important authors, mostly from the Slovenian Littoral.

Among those influenced by Kugy's poetic and reflective mountaineering travelogues were Klement Jug, Vladimir Bartol, Igor Škamperle and Dušan Jelinčič.

Among his admirers were the writers Giani Stuparich, Claudio Magris, Livio Isaak Sirovich, Marco Albino Ferrari and Paolo Rumiz.