Gorizia in the First World War

Gorizia, a town on the Isonzo in the Austrian County of Gorizia and Gradisca, was the first goal of Italy’s offensives on the river from the moment Italy entered the war in May 1915. For more than a year the front ran along the hills just west of the town, and the Italian artillery reduced it to rubble. In August 1916 the Italians entered Gorizia, but the Austrians still held it under fire from the mountains to the east, and in October 1917, after Caporetto, they retook it within a single night. The town came out of the war in ruins and in 1920 passed to Italy.

A town on the border

From 1866 the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austrian Gorizia was marked by the small river Judrio. Before the war Gorizia had about 30,000 inhabitants. According to pre-war figures, almost half of them spoke Italian or Friulian and over a third Slovene, and it was the Slovenes who predominated in the suburbs. The town had a mild climate, and an Italian encyclopaedia of the 1930s called it the Habsburgs’ favourite town.

In April 1915 the Entente promised Italy, in the Treaty of London, Trieste, Gorizia and Gradisca, and Istria. When its troops crossed the border on 24 May, Gorizia was the goal set for them, with Trieste and Ljubljana beyond it.

The bridgehead and the bombardment (1915–1916)

The Austrians withdrew behind the Isonzo, but on its western bank they kept the Gorizia bridgehead: Mount Sabotino and the hills of Oslavia and Podgora. It was held by General Erwin Zeidler’s 58th Division of General Svetozar Boroević’s Fifth Army. In the four Battles of the Isonzo of 1915 the Italians stormed these hills to no effect, and the bridgehead became one of the bloodiest places on the front.

The inhabitants fled or were evacuated. According to the Austrians, in the autumn of 1915 about 2,500 of the town’s 30,000 pre-war inhabitants remained. In the Fourth Battle General Luigi Cadorna ordered the town itself to be shelled. By noon on 18 November, according to the Austrian official history, about 3,000 shells, mostly heavy, had fallen on it, and hospitals marked with the red cross were also hit. The shelling was repeated over the following days, but it had no effect on the defence.

The capture (August 1916)

On 6 August 1916, in the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, the Italians took Sabotino and the summit of Monte San Michele, and on 8 August Zeidler ordered the bridgehead to be abandoned. That day a patrol under Second Lieutenant Aurelio Baruzzi crossed the river and hung the Italian flag on the railway station. During the night of 8–9 August the Austrians fell back to the hills east of the town, and on 9 August the Italians entered Gorizia. It was the first large town of Austria-Hungary they had captured. According to Italian accounts only about 3,000 civilians were left in it. On 10 August the commander of the Third Army, the Duke of Aosta, Emanuele Filiberto, made a ceremonial entry.

Italy celebrated the first great victory of the war, and for the emperor and the Austrian command the loss of a town thought impregnable was a heavy blow. Militarily, however, the prize proved modest. Gorizia lies in a basin, and the Austrians held the hills and mountains around it, from which they went on shelling the town. The Italians attacked them in the autumn of 1916, and then in the Tenth and Eleventh Battles in 1917. They took Monte Santo, but the defenders held Monte San Gabriele above the town.

Loss, return and ruins (1917–1918)

After the breakthrough at Caporetto, in the Twelfth Battle, Cadorna ordered a retreat behind the Tagliamento. On the evening of 27 October 1917 the Italian VIII Corps began to leave Gorizia. Shortly after midnight the Croatian 96th Infantry Regiment of Zeidler’s division entered it and planted the imperial flag on the ruined castle. The prize for which the Italians had paid with tens of thousands of dead and wounded was lost in a single night.

In early November 1918 Italian troops returned to the town, and the Armistice of Villa Giusti left Gorizia on the Italian side. They found a town that had all but ceased to exist. According to the town’s guide to the traces of the war, after 28 months of fighting 680 houses had been razed to the ground, 824 partly demolished and 1,279 damaged. The cathedral was almost entirely destroyed. According to Slovene studies, the Austrian authorities had evacuated about 80,000 Slovenes from the area around Gorizia and the Isonzo valley.

In 1920 Gorizia was officially annexed to Italy. In the 1920s it was rebuilt to plans by the local architect Max Fabiani, and its boundaries were extended to take in the surrounding suburbs, among them Podgora and Solkan, which had been fought over.