Isola was a historical Roman port and village called Haliaetum and was initially standing to the south west from the existing area since the 2nd century BC. The city of Izola was set up on a small island by refugees from Aquileia in the 7th century.
The coast regions of Istria was the target of Venetian influence in the 9th century. The village was initially talked about on paper as Insula in a Venetian document titled Liber albus in 932AD. It became ultimately the territory of the Republic of Venice in 1267, and the centuries of Venetian rule made a strong and living through mark on the area. The Venetian portion of the peninsula passed to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1797 with the Treaty of Campo Formio, until the period of Napoleonic rule from 1805 to 1813 when Istria became part of the Illyrian provinces of the Napoleonic Empire. Following this short time, where Izola’s walls were torn down and utilized to fill in the channel that divided the island from the mainland, the newly set up Austrian Empire ruled Istria until November 1918. Then Istria evolved into part of the Kingdom of Italy, until Italian capitulation in September 1943, whereupon command passed to Germany. Izola was liberated by a naval unit from Koper at the end of April 1945. After the end of World War II, Izola was part of Zone B of the provisionally independent Free Territory of Trieste; after the de facto dissolution of the Free Territory in 1954 it was incorporated into Slovenia, then a part of Yugoslavia. The newly defined Italo-Yugoslav border saw the migration of many people from one side to the other. In Izola’s case, many Italian speakers chose to leave, and in their place Slovenian-speaking people from neighbouring villages settled in the town.
In 1820, a thermal spring was discovered in Izola, leading to the town’s earliest forms of tourism. Between 1902 and 1935 the Parenzana, a narrow-gauge railway line connected the town to Trieste and PoreÄ (Known as Parenzo until 1947). Today Izola has many hotels near the sea, a famous discothèque (Embassy of Gavioli) Ambasada Gavioli, many art galleries, summer concerts, street performances and a movie festival.
