On July the 23rd 1906, the second station of Gorizia, situated in the norther part of the city, is inaugurated. The southern station – nowadays the central station – had already been built in the second half of the 19th century and it connected Venezia with Trieste. The aim of the Transalpina line, on the other hand, was to improve the connections between the port of Trieste, Austria and Czechoslovakia. The objective of the Imperial Railways of the Austrian State was to be in competition with the private company Südbahn which managed, with quite high fares, the Trieste-Vienna route.
Initially, the northern station of Gorizia is called Görz Staatsbahnhof, meaning 'Gorizia National Railway Station'. During the First World War, due to its proximity to the frontline, the station is employed for war supplies, and is severely damaged by the bombings.
The square in front of the station is designed between the two wars by one of the most representative architects of early nineteenth-century Gorizia: Max Fabiani. After the handing over to Italy, in 1918 the building is reconstructed using the original designs. It is named Gorizia Nord (Gorizia North), and renamed Gorizia Montesanto in 1923.
The station plays a fundamental role in the Second World War, too. Initially, after the occupation of Yugoslavia, it is used to transport personnel and equipment to the various frontlines of the War, but after the Nazi occupation of 1943 it is also used as a connection point for trains connecting the Risiera St. Sabba with the concentration camps in Central Europe.
In 1947, after two years of Allied Military Government, the new border is defined: the eastern territories of the province of Gorizia, the eastern districts of the capital and the path of the Transalpina between Piedicolle and Villa Opicina went to Yugoslavia, and the square was divided in half by the barbed wire that separated Gorizia from what would become, in the following years, Nova Gorica.
On the roof of the station a red star soon appeared, a symbol of the dawning socialism of which the new town was supposed to be the best example. The junction with the southern station Udine-Trieste was stopped at the border near the station of Gorizia San Marco (Vrtojba), which was in the Yugoslav territory.
In 2004, following the entry of Slovenia into the European Union, the square regains its unitary character while maintaining a double name: Piazzale della Transalpina in Italy and Trg Evrope in Slovenia. At the centre of the area, in place of the green fence and of the boundary stone, a circular mosaic floor, chosen through an international art competition, is placed: the designer of the work is the artist Franco Vecchiet of Trieste. The mosaic is integrated by two plates, one placed in the Slovenian side and the other on the Italian side, bearing the words "mosaic of the new Europe."