In 2025, two cities once divided by barbed wire are celebrating a shared future — united through art, memory, and imagination
At the edge of the European Union, where Slovenia brushes against Italy, two cities are doing something remarkable — they’re not just cooperating across a border, they are erasing it in spirit.
Nova Gorica and Gorizia, separated by war and ideology for much of the 20th century, are now coming together in an act of cultural alchemy. In 2025, they are making history as the first pair of cities across an international border to jointly hold the title of European Capital of Culture. Co-hosting one of the continent’s most ambitious cultural programmes under the banner GO! 2025 — a name that plays on both movement and togetherness — they are offering Europe a new kind of narrative.
But this is more than a festival. This is a story about healing, about reclaiming space, about proving that identity doesn’t have to be rigid or territorial. And it’s about showing the rest of Europe what it really means to be “borderless.”
A Border Once Cut in Concrete
Walk across Transalpina Square today and you’d never guess it once marked the line between East and West.
Where border guards used to stand, children now chase one another. Where documents were once checked, performances will unfold.
In preparation for GO! 2025, this symbolic square has been completely redesigned. Its new layout doesn’t just remove physical barriers — it removes psychological ones. The cities are sharing not only budgets, logistics, and stages — they are sharing narratives, talent, and public spaces.
The very idea of two cities in different countries serving jointly as Capital of Culture was once unthinkable. Now it’s real. And it’s happening here.
Art as a Way to Tell Truth
The official GO! 2025 programme spans a wide range of disciplines — visual art, theatre, music, gastronomy, heritage restoration, digital media. But it is held together by one uniting idea:
what we once smuggled, we now share.
The programme is organised around four themes:
War and Peace, Smugglers, Very Green, and Creating the New. Each one touches on the lived realities of this borderland — from the scars of the World Wars to the humour of contraband routes, from ecological restoration to bold contemporary design.
An art installation will reimagine old train lines as musical instruments. A culinary festival will blur the lines between gnocchi and žlikrofi. A digital light show will cast stories onto once-divided facades. And at every step, local communities — from both sides — are not just spectators, but co-creators.
Neda Rusjan Bric, Programme Director of GO! 2025, sees the initiative as a continuation of something long rooted in the spirit of the people who live here:
“Ever since the border was established, people in this area have worked to connect and live together, overcoming the historical wounds inflicted during the last century. The European Capital of Culture project represents a major step forward in these efforts — toward a shared future where we exchange not only everyday goods, but also culture and mutual understanding.
In today’s uncertain times for Europe and the world, our efforts under the motto GO! Borderless carry an especially powerful message — one that grows more relevant each day: to live and act together, regardless of our differences, and to strive for peace in every way, without borders and without judgment.”
“GO! Borderless sends a powerful message: to live and act together, without borders and without judgment — especially in times when peace must be actively protected.” — Neda Rusjan Bric, Programme Director, GO! 2025
The Legacy They Want to Leave
Much of the investment has gone into infrastructure that lasts beyond the year: new cultural venues, renovated industrial buildings, public spaces reclaimed for art and memory. But GO! 2025’s greatest ambition is not physical — it is human.
The hope is that long after the final performance and the last curtain call, something will linger: a sense of shared belonging, of cross-border cultural citizenship. And with that, the idea that culture is not a luxury — it’s a necessity for societies that have known division.
As one local curator put it:
Borders are not just fences. They’re in our minds, in our habits. What we’re doing with GO! is helping people learn how to cross them — without fear.