Gorizia

Gorizia is a small, pretty town whose Habsburg past is clear to see in its buildings and gardens. The town is also a symbol of 20th-century Europe’s troubledhistory.

It belonged to the Austro- Hungarian empire before World War One and was then annexed to Italy in 1918. Gorizia was directly affected by the dramatic events that played out on Italy’s eastern border during the Fascist era and World War Two.

At the end of the war the municipality lost part of its outlying districts to the-then Yugoslavia and it was divided by the so-called “Gorizia Wall”, built across Piazza Transalpina, which became one of the symbols of the political and ideological separation between western and eastern Europe in the Cold War.

The border crossing was removed when Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004 and indeed today is a unifying element. And it is precisely in the name of the friendship and cooperation existing between Gorizia and Nova Gorica that the two cities were chosen, together, as European Capital of Culture 2025.