page_title: Gorizia
section_title: Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Gorizia / History / Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: English: Porta Leopoldina or Leopold's Gate in Gorizia/ Gorica (Italy).
context_page_description: Gorizia, English also "Goritz", is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It was the capital of the former Province of Gorizia and is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin town of Nova Gorica has developed on the other side of the modern-day Italian–Slovenian border. The entire region was subject to territorial dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia after World War II: after the new boundaries were established in 1947 and the old town was left to Italy, Nova Gorica was built on the Yugoslav side. Taken together, the two towns constitute a conurbation, which also includes the Slovenian municipality of Šempeter-Vrtojba. Since May 2011, these three towns have been joined in a common trans-border metropolitan zone, administered by a joint administration board.
  The name of the town comes from the Slovene word gorica 'little hill', which is a very common toponym in Slovene-inhabited areas.
context_section_description: Originating as a watchtower or a prehistoric castle controlling the fords of the Isonzo River, Gorizia first emerged as a small village not far from the former Via Gemina, the Roman road linking Aquileia and Emona (modern Ljubljana). The name Gorizia was recorded for the first time in a document dated April 28, 1001, in which Holy Roman Emperor Otto III donated the castle and the village of Goriza to the Patriarch of Aquileia John II and to Count Verihen Eppenstein of Friuli. The document referred to Gorizia as "the village known as Goriza in the language of the Slavs" ("Villa quae Sclavorum lingua vocatur Goriza").
  Count Meinhard of the Bavarian Meinhardiner noble lineage, with possessions around Lienz in Tyrol, is mentioned as early as 1107; as a vogt of the Patriarchate of Aquileia he was enfeoffed with large estates in the former March of Friuli, including the town of Gorizia, and as early as 1127 called himself Graf von Görz, Count of Gorizia. In the late 13th century, the House of Gorizia emerged as one of the most important noble houses in the Holy Roman Empire.
  The borders of the County changed frequently in the following three centuries due to frequent wars with Aquileia and other counties, and also to the subdivision of the territory in two main nuclei: one around the upper Drava river with the center in Lienz, the other around Gorizia itself. Between the 12th century and early 16th century, the town served as the political and administrative center of this essentially independent County of Gorizia, which at the height of its power comprised the territory of the present-day regions of Goriška, southeast Friuli, the Karst Plateau, central Istria, western Carinthia and East Tyrol, and the Windic March with Bela Krajina.
  From the 11th century, the town had two different layers of development: the upper castle district and the village beneath it. The first played a political-administrative role and the second a rural-commercial role. The name of the central square, known to this day in both languages as Travnik or Traunig ("meadow", in Slovene), testifies to this period.
  In the late 15th century, the city rights were expanded to the lower town.
caption: The Leopold Gate, built in the late 17th century in honor of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
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