A huge ball of newspapers containing articles on seminal events affecting the border region will roll from Italy's Gorizia to Nova Gorica in Slovenia as part of the opening ceremony of the European Capital of Culture on 8 February in a recreation of a 1966 performance by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Pistoletto's Newspaper Sphere, which has travelled around the world since the 1960s, will this time feature articles from two Trieste-based newspapers, the Slovenian-language Primorski Dnevnik and the Italian-language Il Piccolo.

Included in the ball will be their reports on the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, the Treaty of Osimo of 1975, as well as an event known as the March of the Brooms when Yugoslav citizens could freely cross the border into Gorizia for a day in 1950.

It will also feature articles on the Slovenian independence war of 1991, Slovenia's accession to the EU in 2004 and the Schengen area in 2007, the announcement of the first cross-border European Capital of Culture, and the 2021 visit by Slovenian and Italian presidents Borut Pahor and Sergio Mattarella.

The Newspaper Sphere will also include a copy of the first issue of Primorski Dnevnik in May 1945. In the final stage of its creation students from the Max Fabiani Art Lyceum in Gorizia will be involved.

The sphere will start its journey in Gorizia's main square, where some 300 young members of local sports associations and some top athletes will roll it through the streets all the way to the border with Slovenia.

There, Slovenian youth will take over, carrying it to the site of the European Capital of Culture opening ceremony, the square in front of the town hall, where it is to be illuminated as a torch of peace.

According to Italian media, the idea to make the sphere part of the European Capital of Culture came to Pistoletto when he was preparing an exhibition in Friuli a year ago.

"It's an incredible moment: the fact that two cities can become a symbol of a common culture seems to me like a kind of cultural parliament that can unite people on the street with the Newspaper Sphere," Pistoletto was quoted as saying by the portal imagazine.

After the opening ceremony, the sphere is expected to return to Gorizia, where it will be displayed in a prominent public place as a testimony to the art at the opening of the cross-border European Capital of Culture.