Friuli Venezia Giulia is one of the 20 regions of Italy and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The regional capital is Trieste on the Gulf of Trieste, Adriatic Sea.
Gorizia is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It was the capital of the former Province of Gorizia and is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin town of Nova Gorica has developed on the other side of the modern-day Italian–Slovenian border. The entire region was subject to territorial dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia after World War II: after the new boundaries were established in 1947 and the old town was left to Italy, Nova Gorica was built on the Yugoslav side. Taken together, the two towns constitute a conurbation, which also includes the Slovenian municipality of Šempeter-Vrtojba. Since May 2011, these three towns have been joined in a common trans-border metropolitan zone, administered by a joint administration board.
The provinces of Italy are the second-level administrative divisions of the Italian Republic, on an intermediate level between a municipality and a region. Since 2015, provinces have been classified as "institutional bodies of second level".
The Italian Army is the land-based component of the Italian Armed Forces. The army's history dates back to the Italian unification in the 1850s and 1860s. The army fought in colonial engagements in China, Libya, Northern Italy against the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I, Abyssinia before World War II and in World War II in Albania, Balkans, North Africa, the Soviet Union, and Italy itself. During the Cold War, the army prepared itself to defend against a Warsaw Pact invasion from the east. Since the end of the Cold War, the army has seen extensive peacekeeping service and combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Ariete tank and among its aircraft the Mangusta attack helicopter, recently deployed in UN missions. The headquarters of the Army General Staff are located in Rome opposite the Quirinal Palace, where the president of Italy resides. The army is an all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel.
Venezia Giulia, traditionally called Julian March or Julian Venetia is an area of southeastern Europe which is currently divided among Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia. The term was coined in 1863 by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, a native of the area, to demonstrate that the Austrian Littoral, Veneto, Friuli, and Trentino shared a common Italian linguistic identity. Ascoli emphasized the Augustan partition of Roman Italy at the beginning of the Empire, when Venetia et Histria was Regio X.
The Austrian Littoral was a crown land (Kronland) of the Austrian Empire, established in 1849. It consisted of three regions: the Istria peninsula, Gorizia and Gradisca, and the Imperial Free City of Trieste. Throughout history, the region has been contested frequently, with parts of it controlled at various times by the Republic of Venice, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia among others.
The Slovene Littoral is one of the five traditional regions of Slovenia. Its name recalls the former Austrian Littoral, the Habsburg possessions on the upper Adriatic coast, of which the Slovene Littoral was part.
The Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, historically sometimes shortened to and spelled "Goritz", was a crown land of the Habsburg dynasty within the Austrian Littoral on the Adriatic Sea, in what is now a multilingual border area of Italy and Slovenia. It was named for its two major urban centers, Gorizia and Gradisca d'Isonzo.
The Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral was a Nazi German district on the northern Adriatic coast created during World War II in 1943. It was formed out of territories that were previously under Fascist Italian control until its takeover by Germany. It included parts of present-day Italian, Slovenian, and Croatian territories. The area was administered as territory attached, but not incorporated, to the Reichsgau of Carinthia. The capital of the zone was the city of Trieste.
Campolongo al Torre is a former comune of the Province of Udine in the Italian region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located about 40 km northwest of Trieste and about 25 km southeast of Udine. Since 2009 it has been one of the two principal centres of Campolongo Tapogliano, a municipality formed by its merger with the former comune of Tapogliano.
Pola or Province of Pola was a province of the Kingdom of Italy created after World War I, that officially existed from 1923 until 1947. The capital was Pola. After the Second World War the Province of Pola became part of Yugoslavia. Following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, the Province of Pola has been part of the Croatia.
The Adriatic campaign of World War II was a minor naval campaign fought during World War II between the Greek, Yugoslavian and Italian navies, the Kriegsmarine, and the Mediterranean squadrons of the United Kingdom, France, and the Yugoslav Partisan naval forces. Considered a somewhat insignificant part of the naval warfare in World War II, it nonetheless saw interesting developments, given the specificity of the Dalmatian coastline.
The Imperial Free City of Trieste and its Territory was a possession of the Habsburg monarchy in the Holy Roman Empire from the 14th century to 1806, a constituent part of the German Confederation and the Austrian Littoral from 1849 to 1920, and part of the Italian Julian March until 1922. In 1719 it was declared a free port by Emperor Charles VI; the construction of the Austrian Southern Railway (1841–57) turned it into a bustling seaport, through which much of the exports and imports of the Austrian Lands were channelled. The city administration and economy were dominated by the city's Italian population element; Italian was the language of administration and jurisdiction. In the later 19th and early 20th century, the city attracted the immigration of workers from the city's hinterlands, many of whom were speakers of Slovene.
The V Army Corps was one of three corps the Italian Army fielded during the Cold War. Based in the regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia the corps was the army's main combat force. The 5th Army Corps was arrayed close to the Yugoslavian border and tasked with meeting any Warsaw Pact forces that crossed the border. On the left flank of the corps the 4th Alpine Army Corps was tasked with blocking the Alpine passes and in the rear of the corps the 3rd Army Corps served as operational reserve. After the end of the Cold War the corps was reduced in size and on 1 October 1997 it became the 1st Defence Forces Command. In 2013 the COMFOD 1° was disbanded and its function and brigades taken over by the 20th Infantry Division Friuli in Florence.
Polizeiregiment "Südtirol", later Bozen, and finally SS-Polizeiregiment "Bozen", was a military unit of the German Ordnungspolizei recruited in the largely ethnic-German Alto Adige region in north-east Italy in late 1943, during the de facto German annexation of the region. The ranks were ethnically German Italian draftees while officers and NCOs were Germans.
Slavia Friulana, which means Friulian Slavia, is a small mountainous region in northeastern Italy and it is so called because of its Slavic population which settled here in the 8th century AD. The territory is located in the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, between the town of Cividale del Friuli and the Slovenian border.
The Guardia alla Frontiera (GaF), was an Italian Army Border guard created in 1937 who defended the 1,851 km of northern Italian frontiers with the so-called "Vallo Alpino Occidentale", "Vallo Alpino Settentrionale" and "Vallo Alpino Orientale".
The Memorial Centre Lipa Remembers is a museum institution opened in April 2015 in a small locality of Lipa situated on the border between Croatia and Slovenia. Center functiones as a part of a larger Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral situated in Rijeka and it is cofounded by the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County and the Matulji Municipality.
The Brigate Osoppo-Friuli or Osoppo-Friuli Brigades were autonomous partisan formations founded in the headquarter of the Archbishop Seminary of Udine on 24 December 1943 by partisan volunteers of mixed ideologies, already active in Carnia and Friuli before the Badoglio Proclamation of 8 September. The partisans in this brigade adhered to various ideologies, including both secularism and Catholicism and socialism and liberalism.
Giovanni Esposito was an Italian general during World War II and a recipient of the Gold Medal of Military Valor. He commanded the 5th Alpine Division "Pusteria" in 1941–1942, and the territorial defense of Trieste from 1943 to 1945, joining the Italian Social Republic.
