Settings such as parks, a castle and a quarry will come to life with art as the city of Nova Gorica and its Italian neighbour Gorizia host the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) this year. One of the highlights will be a piano concert under an iconic railway bridge.

Mija Lorbek, head of the GO! 2025 institute, says they wanted to take advantage of the region's natural beauty to place some of the events in picturesque settings, outside the usual cultural venues.

The opening event on 8 February will kick off with a colourful procession of music and dance heading from the Gorizia Centrale railway station to Nova Gorica. Action will then move to the renovated Europe Square, a symbol of the first cross-border ECOC.

A meeting point once divided by hard border

Europe Square in front of the Nova Gorica train station, which will host the high-profile opening ceremony, is a site once divided by a hard border, first by barbed wire and later a fence.

As Slovenia joined the EU in 2004, it became a point that brings people from both sides of the border together. The square on the Slovenian side was given its current name just before the EU accession ceremony as the fence removal began.

The Italians call the square piazza Transalpina, after the railway line, known as the Bohinj line in Slovenian, which was built in 1906 under Emperor Franz Joseph to link Trieste with Vienna and Prague via the Alps. The picturesque railway is still operational today.

The Nova Gorica railway station is from that period. It is the oldest building in the modernist city that was built on the Slovenian side of the border after WWII, and represents an "old physical link" with Gorizia from a time when the area was ruled by the Habsburg monarchy.

The Nova Gorica train station and the square in front of it under renovation for the European Capital of Culture. Photo: Jure Makovec/STA

Intensive construction is under way to refashion the area around the station into a "free cultural zone" to host various events and better link the two cities.

The area will become home to a new exhibition venue, the European platform for interpreting 20th-century history (EPIC), a venue for films, music and a restaurant called Super 8, and an underpass with two amphitheatres.

The square, decorated with a mosaic of new Europe by the Trieste-based ethnic Slovenian artist Franko Vecchiet, will also provide the stage for Rossini's opera Il viaggio a Reims this year.

Piano concert under Solkan Bridge

The monumental Solkan Bridge over the Soča River, boasting the world's largest stone arch span in a railroad bridge, will provide one of the most scenic backdrops for ECOC events

Internationally acclaimed pianist from Gorizia, Alexander Gadjiev will perform Beethoven's Choral Fantasy under the bridge in July. A few days later he will give a solo recital at the the basilica on Sveta Gora, a pilgrimage site high above the Soča.

The emerald river will also feature as a lab for Marko Peljhan, a multimedia artist from Nova Gorica who has been a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara for several years.

His project Isolabs explores the Soča Valley, "from source to estuary, its elements, trying to understand the environment as a generator of contents that are invisible, liminal" at the "intersections of science, art, linguistics, poetry, and cultures that mix here", he says.

Dance production set in a quarry

A stone's throw from the Solkan Bridge, an international dance troupe formed under the ECOC banner will stage Borderless Body, a production dealing with the impact of technology and robotics on humans, in an operational quarry this summer.

Formed by dancers and choreographers Nastja Bremec Rynia and Michal Rynia, MN Dance Company comprises 15 dancers and is expected to be expanded for the new production. As many as 1,000 dancers from all over the world have auditioned.

The organisers promise the audience will be treated to an experience "from another planet" in a post-apocalyptic setting. The Solkan Quarry is operated by Alpacem Cement (formerly Salonit Anhovo), which has removed some lime production facilities from the site.

Forest symphony and composition of bat sounds

A park of exotic trees and plants on the outskirts of Nova Gorica will provide the venue for Forest Symphony by the Dresdner Sinfoniker. Visitors will have to find and read QR codes hidden in the trees in order to listen to this sound installation.

The Rafut Park opened to the public last year following an extensive restoration. It surrounds a neo-Islamic-style villa built just before WWI by Anton Laščak (1856-1946), an architect who designed many oriental palaces in Egypt. The villa is yet to be renovated.

Another heritage site, the 13th century Rihemberk Castle above the village of Branik, which once belonged to the powerful Lanthieri family, will serve as a venue for a "bat symphony".

The castle is home to several species of bats, and part of it has been left unrestored and closed to the public to protect them.

Musician Boštjan Perovšek is working on a new bioacoustic composition, an installation capturing the subsonic sounds of bats in a sound sculpture that visitors will be able to listen to while walking around the castle.

The castle will also host a video installation by Martina Testen and Simon Šerc that will build on the biodiversity of the Branica Valley below the castle.

A new open-air theatre

The Nova Gorcia National Theatre is getting an outdoor amphitheatre to accommodate an audience of 500. Both the theatre, built in 1994, and the amphitheatre were designed by architect Vojteh Ravnikar (1943-2010).

Apart from theatre productions, the open-air theatre will also be able to host concerts, and opera and ballet shows. It will also be equipped with a roof.

Theatre director Mirjam Drnovšček expects the amphitheatre to open in the second half of July for one in a series of 12 theatre productions staged as part of Dodecalogy 1972-1983, an omnibus dedicated to lives of people in Central Europe in the 20th century.

This content is brought to you in cooperation with the GO! 2025 Nova Gorica Gorizia European Capital of Culture.