There is a point in Europe where you can cross a country without realizing it. We did it by bicycle, following the thin line of what was once a rigid border and today is memory and a beautiful cycle path to be experienced. We are between Gorizia and Nova Gorica, two cities born from the same root and separated for decades by fences, bars and mistrust. Cycling here means breathing European history at every turn. It is not just any itinerary: it is a journey into the fractures of the twentieth century and their slow healing.
The wound of 1947 and the birth of a new city
Everything changes in 1947, when the Treaty of Paris redraws the geographical map. Gorizia remains in Italy, while across the line Nova Gorica is born, built from scratch by Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia. A modern, rational city that grew quickly to replace the historic center that remained across the border.
For nearly sixty years, that line has been a concrete wall. In some places barbed wire, in others a concrete barrier: the so-called Gorizia Wall. Families divided, friends forced to say goodbye from afar. After the restoration, small signs remained of the famous Wall (which look like piles) to remember the time and what happened, while a plaque in the center of the square marks the border which is no longer impassable.
Piazza Transalpina, half Italy, half Slovenia
The emotional heart of our route starting from the Castagnevizza cycle-pedestrian tunnel, a former railway tunnel converted into a cycle-pedestrian stretch of approximately 1 km, is Piazza Transalpina, Trg Evrope in Slovenian. Here the border passed exactly in the middle of the square: on one side Italy, on the other Yugoslavia. The railway station, inaugurated in 1906 under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, suddenly became “foreign”.
Cycling to the center of the square, we stopped on the circular mosaic that marks the exact point of the border. No barriers, no controls: just children playing, crossing back and forth what was once an insurmountable limit. It is here that, on 1 May 2004, Slovenia joined the European Union. It is here that the wall was torn down in a collective ceremony.
From the Iron Curtain to Schengen
With Slovenia’s entry into the EU and then into the Schengen area, the crossings became simple urban roads. Where there were customs offices, today there are cycle paths, parks and cultural centers being relaunched. The old customs officers’ houses are about to be reborn as museum and tourist spaces. Along the way we passed elderly people waiting for the bus, young people heading to Slovenian bars, Italians crossing to refuel or go shopping. Daily life has replaced geopolitical tension. Yet the differences remain visible: Nova Gorica with its modernist apartment blocks, casinos and dynamic economy; Gorizia with elegant buildings and the weight of a past linked to the border and the militarization of the Cold War.
Cycling in memory, looking to the future without borders
Every meter of our itinerary tells something: the smuggling, the passes, the queues at the controls. Today the border stones and some period photographs remain. The sensation when pedaling is intense. You understand how a boundary can impact lives and how powerful the moment it is crossed is. Here we do not celebrate the erasure of identities, but their coexistence.
Gorizia and Nova Gorica are still two cities, two states, two languages. But they share a square, events, cultural projects (they were both European Capitals of Culture, deliberately together) and a common vision. And as we crossed that once impassable line without stopping, we had the clear perception that borders, when they become walls, impoverish us. When they transform into bridges, however, they enrich. Cycling on this former border was exciting. Because here history is not a closed chapter: it is an open road, to be traveled freely.
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