I never say ‘this is a place you’ll never have heard of’ because … who knows. But I’m willing to bet that most people planning a trip to Il Bel Paese would have difficulty finding Trieste on the map and fewer still will be planning a trip there. Pause while you fire up Google Maps and tap in ‘trieste’. You’ll see it’s the bit of Italy that doesn’t really belong; you may even have been unaware that Italy reaches quite that far around the Adriatic. It’s a long way from Sicily and the Mezzogiorno, its neighbours being the Balkan countries (Adriatic Sea to the west, Slovenia everywhere else, and just a short passage of Italy to the rest of Friuli Venezia Giulia, and then west to Venice). This is where ‘the Mediterranean meets the Balkans’, ‘where southern Europe meets mainland’ Europe’, to quote the sometime mayor of Trieste.
Unsurprisingly, the city has been involved in the complex and internicine Balkan infighting over the last centuries. Its heyday was as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, between 1867 and 1918. World War I had this region as its epicentre of course. The Great War redrew the map of Europe, saw the collapse of the old great powers, and saw Trieste annexed by Italy at the end of the conflict. Once the major seaport of this region, a centre for music and literature, this international crossroads went into sharp decline. The cultural hub of Mitteleuropa, where people spoke Friulian diaclect, German, Venetian, Italian and Slovenian (depending on class and occupation) had and has a real air of Viennese charm, with old coffee houses and Austrian architecture. World War II saw ethnic infighting, massacres and the only German concentration camp on Italian soil. Tito’s unification of Yugoslavia only intensified things – the area was finally carved up between Italy and Yugoslavia in 1954.
Essential sights include the Serbian Orthodox Church of San Spiridone, and the 11th century San Silvestro Basilica. There are Roman remains includining the Arch of Riccardo, the Basilica Forense and the Roman Theatre. Check out the Caves of the Carso plateau. Favourites for us are the cultural links. James Joyce wrote here (having left his punctuation back in Dublin), as did explorer Richard Burton. Check out the local comune website for Trieste (you’ll need Italian).
