by InTrieste
In just 26 days, a new digital art venue in Gorizia, a small Friuli Venezia Giulia town, has recorded 100,000 visitors, a turnout that has exceeded local expectations and signaled a growing appetite for immersive, technology-driven culture.
The Digital Art Gallery of Gorizia, which opened late last year, has also logged an additional 64,000 advance reservations, according to regional officials. “It’s a result above every expectation,” said Massimiliano Fedriga, the president of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, adding that the gallery is helping position Gorizia as a cultural destination beyond the momentum generated by GO! 2025, the cross-border European Capital of Culture program shared with neighboring Nova Gorica in Slovenia.
On average, the gallery has welcomed 3,846 visitors a day, with the highest single-day attendance recorded on December 28, during the holiday period, when tourism in the region typically peaks.
Housed in a 1,000-square-meter space fitted with state-of-the-art LED installations, the gallery is billed as the largest digital art venue in Europe. Its inaugural exhibition, Data Tunnel, is an immersive work by the Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol, known for using artificial intelligence and large data sets to create moving, abstract environments that envelop viewers in light, color and sound.
The success of the opening weeks has been closely watched in Gorizia, a city of roughly 34,000 residents that has been working to redefine itself as a hub for contemporary culture. Once a border outpost at the edge of the Cold War, it has in recent years leaned into its position between Italy and Slovenia, promoting cross-border festivals, museums and urban regeneration projects.
The digital gallery is part of that broader strategy. Its scale and technological ambition are unusual for a city of Gorizia’s size, and officials hope it will attract not only day-trippers from the surrounding region but also international visitors already drawn to the area by the GO! 2025 program.
Whether the early surge of interest will translate into sustained attendance remains to be seen. For now, however, the numbers suggest that a mix of cutting-edge art and timely cultural investment has given this border city an unexpected spotlight on Europe’s digital art map.
