by InTrieste
Interview: governor of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Massimiliano Fedriga; mayor of Gorizia, Rodolfo Ziberna
A former transit tunnel near the Italian-Slovenian border has been transformed into what officials describe as the largest digital art tunnel in Europe, marking the opening of the Digital Art Gallery (DAG) in Gorizia with a site-specific installation by the internationally renowned media artist Refik Anadol.
The project reimagines the Bombi Gallery, a passageway more than 300 meters long, as an immersive digital environment. One hundred meters of the tunnel have been fully lined with high-definition LED panels, creating approximately 1,000 square meters of digital surface designed for large-scale audiovisual installations that merge art and technology.
The gallery opened with Data Tunnel, an immersive work by Anadol, an American artist widely recognized for his use of artificial intelligence and data-driven visual systems. Developed specifically for Gorizia, the installation unfolds as a continuous visual flow across the LED walls, drawing on Anadol’s ongoing research into what he calls a “Large Nature Model” — an artificial intelligence trained on millions of environmental images and scientific datasets from museums and international archives.
At the inauguration, the president of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, Massimiliano Fedriga, described the gallery as a rare example of urban redevelopment that turns infrastructure into a permanent cultural asset. He emphasized that the project was conceived as part of the legacy of Go!2025, the joint European Capital of Culture initiative shared by Gorizia and Nova Gorica, and as a long-term investment in digital art for the region.
Local and regional officials highlighted the symbolic value of the site. Once a corridor leading toward the border and the historically charged Casa Rossa crossing, the Bombi tunnel is now being reframed as a shared cultural space. Mario Anzil, the regional vice president with responsibility for culture, pointed to Gorizia’s role as a frontier city where divisions have gradually given way to cooperation, with new technologies serving as a bridge between past and future.
The Digital Art Gallery will be open to the public free of charge, with visitor access managed by Erpac, the regional body for cultural heritage. For safety and preservation reasons, no more than 490 people will be admitted at any one time. The project was developed with funding from Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) and involved a broad partnership that includes the regional government, the municipalities of Gorizia and Nova Gorica, PromoTurismoFVG, the Ministry of Culture and the Meet Digital Culture Center.
As Gorizia and Nova Gorica prepare for their year as a shared European Capital of Culture, the new gallery positions the border city not only as a site of historical reflection, but also as an emerging hub for large-scale digital art in Europe.
