ABSTRACT
“In different forms and ways, boundaries and borders both have to do with the modification of our real landscape, transforming the territory that we physically occupy and inhabit” (Zanini, 1997). Having Piero Zanini’s statement in mind, it is worth considering how frontiers and their alterations have influenced the formation and modification of our built environment at various levels, including the urban level. Many settlements have been denoted as border cities or frontier towns, ranging from Berlin to Jerusalem, with this denomination arising from diverse historical or current political situations; yet always the border has an important impact on the structure and functioning of the settlement. The focus of this chapter is on the Slovenian-Italian border and two small towns closely connected with it, the medieval town of Gorizia (Gorica), today the center of the Italian province of Gorizia in the Region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and the Slovenian town of Nova Gorica (New Gorica), erected after World War II and now the center of the Primorska region. Their parallel lives have been the subject of many studies, from historical, urban, architectural, socio-political, economic and geographical perspectives (Vuga, 1990; Jurca, 1990, 1997; Torkar, 1990, 1999; Angelillo, Angelillo and Menato, 1994; Zoltan, 1997 Spagna, 2003; Angelillo, 2004; Marin, 2007; Cattunar, 2007; Di Battista, 2011). Yet increased interest in this area, especially in the context of the integration of the two towns with the abolition of borders in the process of the enlargement of the European Union and the Schengen Area, raised some new questions related to the changing characteristics of the (former) frontier.
