GO2025 The City Yet to Become

Miha Kosovel

The Slovenian winner of the bid for the European Capital of Culture 2025 ‐ together with the German city of Chemnitz (former Karl-Marx-Stadt) ‐ is the youngest town in Slovenia, long-known as the Slovenian Las Vegas, since it is home to one of the biggest casino companies in Europe. Yet, the peripherisation process of the "westernmost lighthouse of our state that will warn us of the dangers of the reactionary West" was happening for many long decades. The nail on the coffin was the global financial crisis of 2008, which brought even the gambling-tourism industry to a stall. Nova Gorica had to find a new path and a new identity on its own. And culture was a nice way out for a newly-impoverished town with a peculiar, yet vivid, cultural scene.