Park of Remembrance of Gorizia

As in many Italian cities, Gorizia also has its own Park of Remembrance, created to commemorate the victims of the First World War.

Covering an area of approximately two and a half hectares in the very centre of the city along Corso Italia, the site had already served as a cemetery in the mid-nineteenth century. The project was conceived in 1923 on the basis of a design by Enrico Del Debbio, winner of the competition launched to commemorate volunteers from Gorizia who deserted the Habsburg army in order to enlist in the Italian forces.

The park is crossed by several pathways which, beneath the shade of numerous trees, lead visitors to the monuments scattered throughout the area. Among them are busts of the Gorizian irredentists Giovanni Maniacco and Emilio Cravos, of the Tuscan interventionist Vittorio Locchi—author of the poem "La sagra di Santa Gorizia"—and sculptures dedicated to the Alpine Brigade “Julia” and the infantry brigade “Lupi di Toscana”.

At the centre of the park stand a fountain and the remains of a chapel, also designed by Del Debbio in 1929 and destroyed in August 1944 by Slovenian collaborators acting under Nazi orders. A commemorative plaque recalls this episode, bearing witness to one of the many wounds suffered by Gorizia during the twentieth century. Completing the park and its memorial function is a wall dedicated to the 665 inhabitants of Gorizia deported in May 1945 during the period of Yugoslav occupation.