The paper presents and analyses a population census of the town of Gorizia and its "contado" in 1566. There is very little known about the demographic history of this area during the first centuries of early modernity. That's why the population census of 1566 is even more important and interesting; even more so since it distinguishes the population by gender age group, and social class (peasants, town people, nobles). In 1566 the total population of the analysed area, that comprises the town of Gorizia and its surroundings that is, the town and its "contado" (43 communities) comprises up to 17,696 inhabitants. This is not the whole population of Gorizia County, but only of a part of it, the one closest to the capital town. Gorizia itself has 2,397 inhabitants. The Gorizia population clearly shows the features of the traditional demographic regime: the age pyramid is very wide at the bottom, since the young population is considerable while the adult population is relatively scarce; life is relatively short, though less so for the women. None of these general features is surprising. The most striking figure, that is at the same time the most interesting for our purposes, is that 45.1% of the population is composed by children (aged 0-14). The strong and rapid growth of the Gorizia population at that time is in line with the contemporary reports and the historiographical interpretations. The paper is structured as follows: firstly it presents the source, the analysed area and the state of our knowledge about the early modern population history of the Gorizia area. In the central part, the census data are analysed in their different aspects, such as the territorial distribution of the population, its demographic structure (by age groups) and the social peculiarities of the demographic structure (age groups in different social groups), distinguishing between the urban situation and the countryside. The last part of the article discusses the results of the analysis in relation to the economic history of the area. The population data are interpreted by contextualising them into the frame of the economic and population history of the Gorizia region in the 16th century and through a comparison with neighbouring areas. As a means to this end, the paper looks back to the previous period, and by doing so it identifies a factor that created some preconditions for the growth in the second half of the 16th century consisting in the demographic crisis that took place at the end of the 15th century. The results of the analysis present a picture of a population undergoing rapid growth during a period of positive economic conjuncture, confirming as well as specifying and upgrading the periodisation of the economic history of the area. Moreover, the results constitute nearly everything we know so far about the early modern population history of Gorizia and its region.
