While Smartno was a medieval village, carefully renovated regarding both history and livelihood for the current inhabitants, Nova Gorica is an almost ‚brand new‘ city, founded after the post-WW II demarcations left the Slovenian side without a city infrastructure – but with a railway station that was taken away from the Italian side of the formerly common city of Gorizia. Nova Gorica now complements Gorizia, and in the last decades both cities have taken big steps to even preempt the Schengen regulations that allow free traffic across the borders in the European Union.

Nevertheless, „all modern“ in Nova Gorica unfortunately includes a lot of gambling halls and night clubs (both of which are heavily regulated in Italy and therefore draw big crowds, meanwhile even from overseas), and architectural sins like this casino hotel are easy to find.