Duomo di Gorizia (Cattedrale dei Santi Ilario e Taziano)

Gorizia Cathedral, dedicated to Saints Hilary and Tatian, developed from medieval churches into a Baroque building with three naves. Seat of the Archdiocese of Gorizia since its establishment in 1752, it was badly damaged during the First World War and rebuilt by 1928. It contains a cenotaph for the last Count of Gorizia, an altar by Giovanni Pacassi and a collection of historic liturgical objects.

Why it matters

A church dedicated to Saint Hilary is recorded in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. The parish of Saints Hilary and Tatian was established in 1455 and remained the city’s only parish for centuries. When the Patriarchate of Aquileia was suppressed and the Archdiocese of Gorizia established in 1752, the church became the metropolitan cathedral. Its art and rebuilding history reflect the city’s changing ecclesiastical and political fortunes.

What to notice

The three-nave Baroque interior was created between the 1680s and 1702, when the Gothic nave was replaced; side galleries and matronea rise above the aisles. The fifteenth-century Chapel of Sant’Acazio survives within the complex, with a golden inscription and Carinthian frescoes of Evangelists and music-making angels. Giovanni Pacassi’s 1705 high altar is decorated with statues by Pietro Baratta, and a pulpit by De Puttis dates to 1711. The cenotaph of Count Leonardo commemorates the last Count of Gorizia, who died in Lienz in 1500; the slab in Gorizia received the remains of his wife, Paola Gonzaga. The cathedral’s treasury includes gilded wooden busts of Saints Hilary, Tatian and Stephen, two late-fifteenth-century reliquary caskets, and Giuseppe Tominz’s 1820–21 altarpiece.

Context and history

Documents attest a church here by 1296 or 1314, with Saint Hilary explicitly named by 1342. The Chapel of Sant’Anna was added in 1365 and Sant’Acazio in 1471. After the First World War, the cathedral was rebuilt to designs of 1924 and inaugurated in 1928; the Blessed Sacrament altar was consecrated in 1929. A theft in 1956 took several historic treasures. The building was restored in 1983 and later adapted for liturgical use.