Gorizia is officially mentioned for the first time on April 28, 1001; in a document in which Emperor Otto III donates the castle of Salcano (Sylicanum, in Latin) and the “villa,” called “Goritia” (from the Slavic diction “Gorica,” meaning “hillock”) half to the Patriarch of Aquileia, and the other half to the Count of Friuli Guariento of the House of Eppenstein. A double attribution which was always a cause of friction between Gorizia and Aquileia. The term “villa” suggests that a castle did not yet stand on the hill at that time. Although for many historians it is highly probable that there were fortifications (perhaps a watchtower) on the hill as early as Roman or Lombard times, a supposition also justified by the recent discovery of burials belonging to the “people of the long spears.” It is widely believed that a real manor house was built from the 12th century onward. Gorizia appears in “official” and documented history after a tragic century, marked by the cruel invasions of the Hungarians who, in addition to plundering Friuli, impoverished it to such an extent that any trace of established order was unhinged. Added to this were the spiritual anxieties of a millennium that was about to end under the most sinister auspices summarized by the fear of the end of the world: “One thousand and no more one thousand.” “After five decades of devastation,” narrates the Friulian historian Mor, ”the March of Friuli appeared as a heap of ruins, in a desolate and depopulated heath.

In 955 Emperor Otto I finally defeated the Hungarians in a major battle near Augsburg, Bavaria. The problem of securing the territory of the Marca and its revival then arose. Emperor Otto I began the so-called “encastellation” of Friuli: the Germanic emperors provided for an administrative reorganization of the whole area by entrusting the various villas and territories to their loyal vassals who, obeying imperial directives, erected numerous fortifications, destined to become the hundreds of castles that still beautify Friuli-Venezia Giulia today.

The history of the County of Gorizia is inextricably linked to its opposition to the Patriarchate of Aquileia, of which the Counts were the advocates. The Patriarchs, dominating Friuli, represented an obstacle to the expansionist aims of the Counts toward the Po Valley. Wars, battles, assaults, and conspiracies dotted, often bloody, the history of medieval Friuli. The Gorizian Counts often showed unscrupulous behavior, dictated at times by the difficulties of finding living space between more homogeneous administrative entities and also by an objective difficulty of unitarily recomposing a very large territory, as can be detected from all the geopolitical maps reconstructed by historians.

Unifying and connecting vast territories within defined boundaries was in fact the constant, with alternating fortunes, policy of the Counts of Gorizia. One of the most dramatic moments in the contention between the Counts and Patriarchs had occurred in 1150, when Count Enghelbert II, accused by Patriarch Pellegrino of stealing, took the prince of the Church prisoner: at the time the fact aroused immense scandal and uproar. The lords of Styria and Tyrol intervened, who freed the Patriarch and imposed a harsh compromise on the Gorizian, without, however, succeeding in depriving him entirely of the advocazia over Aquileia.

A period of continuous clashes between Gorizians and Patriarchs ensued. As part of these conflicts, on January 21, 1202, in a small church near Cormòns, the carefully restored remains of which can still be seen today, the Treaty of San Quirino was stipulated, which officially sanctioned the recognition of full possession of the Gorizian area, with all the annexed properties, to the Mainards. By the same treaty, the Patriarchate of Aquileia obtained jurisdiction between the Isonzo, Monfalcone and the sea, while the Counts were entitled, in addition to the territory of Gorizia, to several other castles, including Cormòns, Arispergo, Barbana and Tomaj. The Treaty of San Quirino did not end the disputes between the County of Gorizia and the Patriarchate, however, but compromised their relations even more since it had officially recognized the existence of the Gorizian fiefdom. The Gorizians then endeavored to complete their scattered possessions and unify them into well-defined domains. They consolidated them by building castles, concretely separating the territory of Gorizia from the Patriarchate.