Two towns divided by history unite as Europe's cultural capital

Film director Anja Medved has long dwelled on the pain of her grandmother, who was separated from her family when the border between Italy and then Yugoslavia was drawn up after World War II in 1947.

"The border was always very present in my life but I did not see that as negative. It was totally different for my grandmother... who had been traumatised," the 56-year-old said.

Today, that border has virtually disappeared, and the two towns on either side of the frontier are now joint holders of this year's title of European culture capital. But although they are cooperating, the two towns are quite different.

Italy's Gorizia was founded more than 1,000 years ago and sports characteristic cobble-stone lanes, while just across the railway tracks which mark the border, Slovenia's Nova Gorica has wide streets with many trees and parks.

Yugoslav authorities decided in 1948 to build Nova (New) Gorica as a symbol of the government's might and a way to mitigate any resentment over Gorizia being left to Italy. But the town's future changed when Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1991 and joined the EU in 2004.

'Go borderless'

Twenty years later, some 400 events from Saturday will mark the towns being Europe's cultural capital 2025.  Under the slogan "Go borderless", the project aims to retrace the "challenging history" but also "move the borders in our heads", chief coordinator Mija Lorbek said.

She added it's the first time two towns from two EU countries are jointly hosting the capital of culture, featuring artists such as Medved.

"Borders are there to be overcome... The good thing about borders is they invite you to look over them," Medved said.

When Medved grew up in Nova Gorica, it was already possible to cross the border with a pass, distributed to residents from the 1960s on both sides to allow them restore family ties.

"You could ride your bicycle into a completely different world that had a different smell, colours were different, public buses were different —- orange in Italy and green in Yugoslavia," Medved remembered.

"And that feeling of having such a different world at the reach of your hand, paradoxically, gave you a strong sense of freedom."

This contrasted with the experience of especially her grandmother who was born in Gorizia but moved into a village outside the town when she married.

When the border was drawn, it not only cut through some yards, vineyards and fields but also left Medved's grandmother feeling "nostalgia" and "sorry for being in a completely different world" than her relatives on the Italian side.

'Irony of border'

Although some call them "twin towns", Italian publicist Andrea Bellavite, the author of a guide on them, insists the two "are extremely different".

"I like to think of them as two towns that conjoin and become a new reality that could serve to Europe and the world as a marvellous example of how diversity can help build something great," he said.

While 13,000 people live in central Nova Gorica, where demand for housing is high, Gorizia has seen its population drop to 32,000 people.

That's almost halved in 30 years, with some Slovenians most recently snapping up properties in the Italian town, where businesses are closing and real estate prices have dropped.

One attraction that Nova Gorica hopes to highlight is that Charles X, the last French king of the Bourbon dynasty, lies buried in a monastery there.

After his abdication in 1830, he found refuge in the Austrian Empire. He died in the small town of Gorizia in 1836 and was buried in the nearby Kostanjevica Monastery, in modern-day Slovenia.

"That is the irony of the border - who would have thought that the last French (Bourbon) king would rest in Nova Gorica?" said Medved. 

"Not in Gorizia, but in Nova Gorica, in that modernist Socialist town! That tells a lot to those who think we can organize everything in boxes."