Send Gift Baskets to Nova Gorica, Slovenia

The Italian government signed a peace treaty with the Allies, including Socialist Yugoslavia, in 1947, following World War II. Most of the Slovene-inhabited areas of the Province of Gorizia were transferred to Yugoslavia by the treaty. Although Gorizia was under Italian rule, the town itself was not. As a result of the new border, the city was cut off from its northern and eastern suburbs. Some 40 percent of the municipality’s territories were transferred to Yugoslavia, including Solkan, Lampeter, Kromberk, Rožna Dolina, and Pristava. Around one-fifth of the municipality’s residents lived in these areas (primarily Slovenes with a small Friulian-speaking minority). However, there was no cohesive structure between them, and there was little connection between them. To solve this problem, the Communist authorities of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia built a new settlement that connected these suburbs into a new urban area. Called initially New Gorizia, the new town was known as Nova Gorica. A vital component of the project was the personal backing of Marshal Tito, the Communist leader of Yugoslavia. Le Corbusier’s former pupil, Slovenian architect Edvard Ravnikar, was commissioned to design the project. Construction of the first projects began in January 1949 after the plans were laid out in the winter of 1947.

As a municipality, the city was incorporated in 1952, and the older settlements of Solkan, Kromberk, and Rona Dolina became suburbs of Nova Gorica somewhat reluctantly. The town grew in the 1950s and 1960s until it reached its current size by the mid-1980s. The aforementioned older suburbs gained independence again in the early 1990s. The change, however, only affected the official statistics on population: Nova Gorica dropped off the list of Slovenia’s ten largest towns. The city remains the second biggest urban conglomeration in western Slovenia, behind Koper.