Nova Gorica

Nova Gorica (pronounced [ˈnɔ̀ːʋa ɡɔˈɾìːt͡sa]; population: 13,852 (town); 21,082 (incl. suburbs); 31,000 (municipality)) is a town and a municipality in western Slovenia, on the border with Italy. Nova Gorica is a planned town, built according to the principles of modernist architecture after 1947, when the Paris Peace Treaty established a new border between Yugoslavia and Italy, leaving nearby Gorizia outside the borders of Yugoslavia and thus cutting off the Soča Valley, the Vipava Valley, the Gorizia Hills and the northwestern Karst Plateau from their traditional regional urban centre. Since 1948, Nova Gorica has replaced Gorizia as the principal urban centre of the Goriška or Gorizia region, as the northern part of the Slovenian Littoral has been traditionally called.

Since May 2011, Nova Gorica has been joined together with Gorizia and Šempeter-Vrtojba in a common trans-border metropolitan zone, administered by a joint administration board.

Name

The name Nova Gorica means 'new Gorizia'. However, the origin of the name Gorizia/Gorica itself is Slavic. The common local term for the town is Gorica (i.e., 'Gorizia'), while residents tend to refer to the neighboring Italian town as Stara Gorica 'old Gorizia'. This use is also reflected in Slovenian license plates (GO for Gorica), as well as in the name of the local association football club ND Gorica. The word gorica is a diminutive form of the Slovene common noun gora 'hill'. In archaic Slovene, it also meant 'vineyard'. It is a common toponym in Slovenia and in other areas of Slovene settlement.