Gorizia

 

Gorizia (Gorica in Slovenian, Gurize in standard Friulian and Guriza in the local variant, Görz in German, Gorisia in bisiacco) is an Italian town of 34 034 inhabitants in the special statute region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

The city forms an urban area integrated also administratively with the Slovenian municipalities of Nova Gorica and San Pietro-Vertoiba. The territory of the Slovenian city of Nova Gorica, also located along the Isonzo river, was an integral part of the municipality of Gorizia until 1947, when Istria and a large part of Venezia Giulia were ceded to Yugoslavia following the Treaty of Paris. Due to its position and its history, Gorizia is one of the points of conjunction between the Romance, Slavic and Germanic cultures. Like the rest of the Gorizia area, the city falls both within the boundaries of historic Friuli and in those of Venezia Giulia.

 

Territory

Gorizia is located on the extreme eastern outskirts of the Friulian plain on the border between Italy and Slovenia. Located on the slopes of the Karst, a rocky limestone plateau belonging to the Dinaric Alps, at the confluence of the valleys of the Isonzo and Vipacco rivers, natural communication routes between East and West already in ancient times.

Gorizia is bathed by the Isonzo river, a watercourse that flows for 2⁄3 in the Slovenian Gorizia and for 1⁄3 in the province of Gorizia. The Isonzo enters Italian territory right near Gorizia. Its maximum flow was recorded in 1924 in Salcano (a fraction of Gorizia), when it reached 2 500 m³ / s. In particular, the Vipava River flows into the Isonzo in Savogna d'Isonzo, an Italian municipality located south of the city.

Along the Isonzo river, opposite Gorizia over the border between Italy and Slovenia, is the Slovenian city of Nova Gorica, whose territory was an integral part of the municipality of Gorizia until 1947, when Istria was largely of Venezia Giulia were ceded to Yugoslavia following the Treaty of Paris, which was the consequence of the defeat of Italy in the Second World War.

The city overlooks the Isonzo plain, the name of the portion of the Po Valley next to the Isonzo river, and is surrounded by the Collio hills, which are known for the cultivation of vines and for the production of quality wines. In the Collio, wines are produced, to which the DOC "Collio Goriziano" is assigned, which are also known internationally. In the Collio cherries are produced and, after decades of neglect, the cultivation of the olive tree has been rediscovered.

 

Climate

Gorizia is sheltered to the north by the mountains and therefore is not affected by the cold northern winds: despite this, being almost at the mouth of the pre-alpine and karst passes, it is subject to the bora, a katabatic wind from east / north-east which blows with particular intensity. This wind, which is generally dry, can sometimes bring heavy snow. The bora that blows on Gorizia, since it comes from the valley of the Vipava river, meets the obstacle of the hills east of its inhabited center before the city, which considerably mitigates its fury.

The climate of Gorizia, relatively temperate, is however influenced by the fresh and humid winds coming from the south-west, which penetrate the Isonzo plain, the lowland towards which the city opens. In summer, thunderstorms and hailstorms are quite frequent: the sirocco is not uncommon, which is usually followed by abundant rainfall. Based on the thirty-year reference average 1971-2000, the average temperature of the coldest month, January, is +3.3 ° C, while that of the hottest month, July, is +23.0 ° C.

 

History

Ancient age
More or less in the area where the city of Gorizia is currently located in Roman times, two vicissitudes stood since the 1st century BC, Castrum Silicanum, from which the modern Salcano was derived, and Pons Aesontii or (Pons Sontii), corresponding to the modern locality of Mainizza, as indicated on the Tabula Peuntingeriana.

Here stood a mansio of the via Gemina at the point where this Roman road, which connected Aquileia to Aemona (modern Ljubljana), crossed the Isonzo river. It is possible that Noreia, the capital of the ancient Noric region, was located in the area in the 15th century BC.

Medieval age
The name of Gorizia appears for the first time in the year 1001 in the aforementioned imperial donation that Otto III of Saxony had drawn up in Ravenna, through which the Saxon ruler ceded the castle of Salcano and the villa called Goriza to Giovanni IV of Ravenna , patriarch of Aquileia, and Guariento, count of Friuli.

The locality of Goriza is mentioned later, in 1015, in another document, with these words: Medietatem unius villae que sclavonica lingua vocatur Goriza (it. "The half of the village which in the Slavic language is called Goriza"). The Eppenstein family ruled Gorizia until 1090. From that date, the city was governed first by the Mosburgs, then by the Lurngau, a family originally from Val Pusteria related to the Palatine counts of Bavaria.

With them the population of the city grew, consisting mostly of Friulians (artisans and merchants), Germans (employed in the public administration) and Slovenes (farmers), with the latter settled mainly in the peripheral areas and in the neighboring rural centers. The bellicosity of the counts of Gorizia, together with a precise marriage policy.

 

This allowed the county, in its period of maximum splendor (corresponding to the second half of the 13th and the first decades of the 14th century) to extend over much of north-eastern Italy (so much so that it also included the cities of Treviso for a short period and Padua in Veneto), on the western part of today's Slovenia, on the so-called "inner" Istria (the county of Pazin) and on some areas of modern Austrian territory (Tyrol and Carinthia). The counts had established their habitual residence in the Austrian city of Lienz, while Merano was the main state mint.

During the reign of Henry II (1304-1323), the town of Gorizia, which by now had acquired typically urban connotations, obtained the title of city. In the first decades of the following century, the absorption of the patriarchal principality of Aquileia by the Republic of Venice led the counts of Gorizia to adopt a balanced policy between the House of Habsburg and the Venetian republic. The political step towards the Republic of Venice was forced by the fall of the patriarchate of Aquileia. Gorizia in fact asked the Venetian doge for the feudal investiture (1424) for the comital territories previously granted to the Count by the Patriarch.

With this act Gorizia found himself in the ambiguous position of vassals of the Republic of Venice, the successor state of the Patriarchate, as regards some Friulian fiefs beyond the Isonzo, and vassals of the Habsburg Emperor as regards the territories historically constituting the ancient county . In 1455 the districts not included in the defensive walls of the southern area (the so-called Lower Town), which were partly inhabited by Slovenians, were incorporated in Gorizia through the extension of city privileges.

Membership of Austria
At the end of the 15th century, the last count of Gorizia, Leonardo of Gorizia, died in the city of Lienz without descendants, leaving the county to Maximilian I of Habsburg. The act, considered invalid by the Venetians who claimed the annexation of the county of Gorizia to the Republic of Venice for ancient rights of vassalage, was the casus belli that prompted the Venetians to denounce the violation of these ancient treaties.

Any Venetian attempt to take over the city, even by force, was in vain. Only between April 1508 and August 1509 the army of the Republic of Venice, then at war also against Louis XII of France, managed to occupy the lower part of the city, but not the castle of Gorizia. A few months later, following the Venetian defeat in the battle of Agnadello (14 May 1509) by French arms, the occupation force of the Republic of Venice was forced to abandon Gorizia.

Since then Gorizia was part of the hereditary lands of the House of Habsburg, first as the capital of the homonymous county and later as the capital of the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca. The latter, from the mid-nineteenth century, became part of the Austrian Littoral, an administrative region of the Austrian Empire born in 1849 from the suppression of the previous Kingdom of Illyria. The title of Count of Gorizia passed to the sovereigns of Austria until 1918, except for a brief interruption: the French occupation, which took place from 1809 to 1813 with the inclusion of the city in the Illyrian Provinces, governorate created by Napoleon in the of the First French Empire.

As a consequence of the third Italian war of independence, which led to the annexation of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrian imperial administration, for the whole second half of the nineteenth century, increased the interference on the political management of the territory to mitigate the influence of the Italian ethnic group, fearing the irredentist currents. During the meeting of the Council of Ministers on November 12, 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at the Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the empire with an Italian presence:

"His Majesty has expressed the precise order that action be taken decisively against the influence of the Italian elements still present in some regions of the Crown and, appropriately occupying the posts of public, judicial, masters employees as well as with the influence of the press , work in South Tyrol, Dalmatia and on the coast for the Germanization and Slavization of these territories according to the circumstances, with energy and without any regard. His Majesty reminds the central offices of the strong duty to proceed in this way with what has been established. "

(Franz Joseph I of Austria, Council of the Crown of 12 November 1866)

 

The policy of collaboration with the local Slavs, inaugurated by the Tsaratino Ghiglianovich and the Raguseo Giovanni Avoscani, then allowed the Italians to conquer the municipal administration of Ragusa in 1899. In 1909, however, the Italian language was banned in all public buildings and Italians they were ousted by the municipal administrations. These interference, together with other actions to favor the Slavic ethnic group considered by the empire most loyal to the crown, exasperated the situation, feeding the most extremist and revolutionary currents.

World War I
The First World War for Gorizia began in the summer of 1914, due to its belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the Kingdom of Italy entered the war in May 1915. The first Gorizia victim of the conflict is considered the Countess Lucy Christalnigg, who was killed by mistake at a checkpoint of the kaiserlich-königliche Landwehr in Serpenitza while traveling from Klagenfurt to Gorizia on behalf of the Red Cross in August 1914.

During the First World War, paying a considerable tribute in terms of human lives, including the so-called Gialli del Calvario (so called for the color of the insignia), the Italian troops entered Gorizia for the first time in August 1916.

In the battle of Gorizia (9-10 August 1916) 1 759 officers and about 50 000 soldiers on the Italian side lost their lives; on the Austrian side, 862 officers and about 40,000 soldiers died, therefore a very high number of deaths. In this climate, the well-known popular song O Gorizia tu sei maledetta was composed, written by an anonymous military man and then became part of the anarchist and anti-militarist tradition. Anyone caught singing this song was accused of defeatism and shot. The original version was transcribed by Cesare Bermani.

The taking of Gorizia was also praised by contemporaries, as evidenced by the poem La Sagra di Santa Gorizia by Vittorio Locchi, published for the first time in 1918, which had numerous reprints.

Taken back by the Austrians following the victory of Caporetto (October 1917), the city was definitively occupied by the Italian Royal Army only after the war ended, on 7 November 1918. Within the General Commissariat of Venezia Giulia, the Italians initially preferred not to upset a multi-centennial and efficient administrative fabric. The County simply changed its name, immediately after the official union with the Kingdom of Italy (10 September 1919), in the province of Gorizia.

The transition to Italy
The fate of the province of Gorizia, created in 1919, was marked by the results of the political elections of 1921, where four Slovenian deputies and an Italian Communist deputy were elected, which stirred up the nationalist forces, which began to push for a normalization of the local Julian administration, so that it was brought back to the general model of the state. The newborn province of Gorizia was then suppressed in 1923. This suppression was therefore caused by administrative and political reasons.

With the advent of the fascist regime, when democratic freedoms had been eliminated and the government's fist was sufficiently firm, Gorizia was initially assigned to the province of Friuli (1923), but already in 1927, with the reorganization of the provincial districts, it became the capital of the new province of Gorizia, with slightly different borders compared to those of 1923: in particular, compared to the latter, the neighboring municipalities of Lucinico, Piedimonte del Calvario, Salcano, San Pietro di Gorizia and Sant'Andrea di Gorizia were aggregated and , in 1928, the neighboring municipality of Vertoiba.

Between 1927 and 1947 the province of Gorizia was therefore extended over a significantly wider territory than the current one, since it also included the upper and middle valley of the Isonzo river, with its tributaries, up to Gradisca, corresponding only in part to the old province of Gorizia suppressed in 1923.

The jurisdiction of the new province of 1927 still included the entire eastern Friuli, but this time it was deprived of the Bisiacaria and Grado, united to the province of Trieste, and the district of Cervignano, which remained in the Province of Friuli.

 

The reconstruction work was carried out mainly during the Fascist period. New roads were opened and a modest industrial area was developed. A new cemetery was built, between Sant'Andrea and Merna, and the first functioning structures of the Gorizia airport, still today dedicated to Amedeo Duca d'Aosta, the hero of Amba Alagi.

A health citadel was built to the south-east of the city center, including the hospital where, in the sixties, the doctor Franco Basaglia, founder of the modern concept of mental health, reformer of the psychiatric discipline in Italy and inspirer of the so-called Law Basaglia (n. 180/1978) who introduced an important legal revision of psychiatric hospitals in Italy and promoted significant transformations in the treatments in the area.

As far as inter-ethnic relations are concerned, since the mid-twenties the fascist regime had begun to apply the Italianization policy of the Slovenes present in the territory to Gorizia, as in the rest of Venezia Giulia. First the Italianization of toponyms was started; then, from 1927, surnames were also introduced and, in 1929, the banning of teaching in Slovenian from all public schools in the city of all levels.

In the city, the Slovenian language was still used for some years in diocesan religious institutes, thanks to the protection and personal prestige of the archbishop of Gorizia Francesco Borgia Sedej, an advocate of inter-ethnic dialogue and the highest point of reference for the Catholics of Gorizia. In 1931, immediately after Sedej's resignation and death, Slovenian was expelled, as a vehicular language, even from diocesan schools.

World War II
This vexatious policy, accompanied by violence and oppression (including the assassination of the Slovenian composer Lojze Bratuž in a fraction of Gorizia), had serious repercussions in the already deteriorated relations between nationalities and aroused the ire of Slovenian anti-fascist organizations such as the TIGR. Starting from 1941, with the invasion of Yugoslavia during the Second World War, the fascist authorities proceeded to internment in concentration camps (Arbe concentration camp, Gonars concentration camp, Visco, Poggio Terza Armata), of a a certain number of "foreigners" (or "alloglots") residing both in the city and in its province, many of whom never returned, decimated by disease and starvation.

During the Second World War, immediately after the Badoglio proclamation of 8 September 1943 and the consequent Italian surrender, the Gorizia area was the scene of clashes between the two former Italian and German allies, who took their name from the capital city, the battle of Gorizia (September 1-26, 1943). For a short period (1943-1945) it was placed under the German military administration and included in the Austrian Littoral, a governorate which in turn was placed under the direct control of Friedrich Rainer, Gauleiter of Carinthia.

With the military occupation of the city by the partisans of the 9th Slovenian Corps, in Gorizia in May 1945 after World War II ended, the purges began, which reached their peak between 2 and 20 May, against the opponents, or possible opponents to the regime (especially Italians, but also Slovenians). There were 332 missing in the Gorizia area, of which 182 civilians and 150 soldiers, a figure of 665 people at the end of the historical examination. Most of the deportees were killed in various parts of Yugoslavia, in particular in Ljubljana, or transported to the interior of Yugoslavia.

At the end of the conflict, with the Treaty of Paris, the municipality had to give about three fifths of its territory to Yugoslavia, with 15% of the resident population. However, the historic center and most of the urban area of ​​the city remained in Italian territory.

The second post-war period and the recovery
However, part of the periphery located to the north and east remained in Yugoslav territory (the hamlets of Salcano, San Pietro di Gorizia and Vertoiba), as well as a large part of its province. The border crossed a semi-central area of ​​the city, leaving in the Slovenian part, in addition to the aforementioned hamlets, many buildings and structures of public utility.

 

Among the latter, the Gorizia Montesanto railway station which was located on the Transalpina railway line connecting the "Austrian Nice", as Gorizia was called, to Central Europe. The square in front of the station, divided between the two nations, has since 2004 been made open to visitors on both sides after the demolition of the Gorizia Wall which occurred with the entry of Slovenia into the European Union. At the center of it there is now a mosaic and a commemorative metal plate that marks the layout of the border between the two states.

In the part of the city in Slovenian territory Nova Gorica was built in the fifties, by the will of the Yugoslav political leadership, as the territories of the province of Gorizia annexed to Yugoslavia, closed the border with the West considered enemy, were left without an administrative center and economic towards which they could gravitate.

Compared to Berlin, cut in two by the border protected by towers armed with machine guns, Gorizia represented, in the second half of the forties and in the fifties, a clandestine crossing for many Yugoslav citizens and nations belonging to the Warsaw Pact, which then integrated perfectly in the economic and social fabric of the city.

After Tito's break with the Soviet bloc countries in 1948, Gorizia, despite experiencing several moments of tension (in 1953 Tito threatened to take Gorizia and Trieste with arms, gathering hundreds of thousands of veterans in Okroglica, less than 10 km from the city), saw relations gradually normalize, above all thanks to the agreements of Udine, with which the "pass" was introduced which simplified the procedures for crossing the border.

During the sixties Gorizia started a good neighborly relationship with Nova Gorica, which arose in the decade immediately following the definition of the border in 1947: in fact, cultural and sporting encounters have often brought the two cities into contact and united. The presence of a Slovenian community in Gorizia necessarily catalyzed the collaboration. The Osimo agreements, definitively sanctioning the border status quo, contributed a lot to the definitive reconciliation with Yugoslavia and then with the subsequent Republic of Slovenia.

The new millennium
On 21 December 2007, Slovenia entered the Schengen treaty in effect and the cities of Gorizia and Nova Gorica are today without interposed borders. The ever stronger bond that unites them has allowed the two cities to start a process of forming a single development pole.

In this regard, projects of mutual interest and a series of bilateral or multilateral meetings have recently been finalized that involve not only the two municipalities, but also other neighboring centers. Periodic meetings are also organized between the municipal councils of Gorizia, Nova Gorica and San Pietro-Vertoiba to develop common strategies and create new synergies for the economic development of the region. Gorizia in recent years has been experiencing a slow but constant rebirth at both an infrastructural and social level.