Exhibition and Events

Industrialists, merchants, innovators and philanthropists: for over a century, the Ritter de Záhony family played a leading role in the economic and social life of Gorizia, contributing to its transformation into a modern industrial centre.

Having arrived in the city in the early nineteenth century, they developed businesses ranging from sugar refining to textile production, from mills to a paper mill, and even agriculture. They championed the arrival of the railway, led the Chamber of Commerce, held political office and supported major initiatives in the fields of education, social welfare and charity.

But the Ritter family’s story is also one of palaces and gardens, art and antiquities collections, music and culture, which has left numerous traces in Gorizia and the surrounding area. Through paintings, photographs, documents, personal effects and testimonies drawn from the Coronini collections and from major museums, archives and libraries in the region, the exhibition traces the extraordinary story of a family that shaped an entire century of Gorizia’s history, right up to the outbreak of the Great War.