At the beginning of the Nineteenth century, the area that is now occupied by the park was outside the urban centre. In 1827 the city council decided to move the city cemetery there, which was then surrounded by walls, leaving only one entrance on Via Duca d'Aosta.
In 1860, the urban structure of Gorizia began to change after the inauguration of the railway station Southern Line Railroad, which connected Trieste and Udine. The station was connected to the city centre by a wide avenue (the present Corso Italia) that runs along the Park, and that became, in the following decades, the most important route along which the urban growth of the city developed. As a result, the podestà Depretis decreed to move the cemetery to the north, thus turning the area occupied by the old cemetery into the current park.
In 1929, a small, circular shaped neo-classical temple was erected in the centre of the park. It was built in honour of the volunteers of Gorizia who fell in the Great War, and designed by Enrico Del Debbio. Subsequently, a large number of busts, plaques and monuments, mostly related to the Risorgimento and the period of World War I, were sited in the park, which became a symbolic place par excellence of the 'italianity' of Gorizia.
After the signing of the Armistice on September the 8th 1943, the work of Del Debbio was at the centre of conflicts between the Slovenian collaborators of the Nazis (domobranci) and of the Fascists. Both sides were allied with the German occupier, but were also in open conflict at the level of national claims. In 1944, after a Fascist attack, the temple, the symbol of italianity, was blown up by the domobranci with the approval of the Nazis, nursing their policy of 'divide and conquer'.
The rubble of the monument, deliberately left in ruins as a warning, became a privileged place for the organization of events and commemorations for the Italian component of the city. It was during one of these celebrations, on August the 8th, 1946, during the Allied Military Government, that several grenades were detonated, causing some casualties. The attack was attributed to the pro-Yugoslav groups who, at that stage, were fighting for the annexation of Gorizia to Yugoslavia. This gesture led to a violent reaction from the Italian side, who railed against the Slovenians, their homes and shops.
Since 1985, the park has also been home to the lapidarium which commemorates those deported to Yugoslavia during the Yugoslav administration of Gorizia (May-June 1945).