Museo della Grande Guerra e della Pace

Gorizia's Museum of the Great War and Peace occupies the lower levels of Casa Dornberg and Casa Tasso in Borgo Castello. Its collections interpret the First World War on the Isonzo front through the experience of soldiers and civilians.

Why it matters

Gorizia stood on the front line and was taken by Italian forces in 1916. The museum relates military events to everyday life, displacement and destruction, while extending the narrative beyond the fighting to the ways in which the dead were remembered.

What to notice

Uniforms, photographs, personal objects and documents represent Italian and Austro-Hungarian experiences. A full-scale reconstructed trench uses a recorded soundscape to interpret conditions at the front. Material devoted to Gorizia places the city within this history, while the concluding treatment of war cemeteries and memorial shrines examines the landscape of remembrance.

Context and history

The sixteenth-century houses provide a setting older than the events explored in the museum. Within the Borgo Castello collections, this institution connects regional history with the wider consequences of the war. Its emphasis on people rather than uniforms alone makes civilian experience and postwar memory integral to the account.