The border town of Gorizia. From fortress to laboratory of the modern

Functioning as a crossroads between the Latin and Slav worlds, and thanks to its multicultural character, the city of Gorizia can be considered to be a laboratory of modernity, a meeting point between great national identities that share the same European destiny. The issues involving the Twentieth Century city between the two world wars and the quality of the urban and architectural heritage from which it takes shape and form in space are examined in depth in this article. This heritage has also developed in reaction to events that mark the transition of the territory to radically new political orders. At the end of the Great War, Gorizia and other “redeemed cities” (Rovereto, Trento, Trieste, Monfalcone, Grado, Capodistria) definitively became Italian as a consequence of the Treaty of Rapallo (1921). Gorizia was divided into two parts at the end of the First World War to then return to the open place of comparison between the Italian and German-Slav worlds towards the end of the Twentieth Century.