Gorizia

Beneath its hilltop castle, Gorizia was the seat of a dynasty of counts whose possessions extended across Friuli, Carinthia and the eastern Alpine borderlands. Their lands were divided and diminished over the centuries, but Gorizia remained the center of their county. At the meeting of German, Friulian and Slovene-speaking communities, the town drew merchants from northern Italy and grew around the stronghold of its rulers.

When Count Leonhard died without an heir in 1500, his remaining lands passed to the Habsburgs. Venice briefly occupied Gorizia in 1508–1509 before the Austrians recovered it. In 1752, after the dissolution of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, Gorizia became the seat of a new archdiocese for the Habsburg lands. Church reforms later suppressed the see and restored it on a smaller footing. During the Napoleonic wars the town passed into the French Illyrian Provinces, returning to Austrian rule in 1813.