Trieste

 

Trieste (Trst in Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian) is an Italian town of 200 523 inhabitants, the capital of the Italian region with special status Friuli-Venezia Giulia, overlooking the homonymous gulf in the northernmost part of the Upper Adriatic, between the peninsula Italy and Istria, a few kilometers from the border with Slovenia in the historic region of Venezia Giulia.

For centuries it has represented a bridge between western and central-southern Europe, mixing Mediterranean, Central European and Slavic characters and is the most populous and densely populated municipality in the region, with the port of Trieste which in 2016 was the Italian port with the most freight traffic and one of the most important in southern Europe.

 

Origin of the name

The etymology of the name Tergeste is of pre-Roman origin with a pre-Indo-European base: terg in ancient Illyrian means "market", while the suffix -este is typical of the Venetian language (not to be confused with the modern Venetian language), a language spoken by the ancient Venetians , Indo-European population settled in north-eastern Italy. The term terg is also found in the Old Church Slavonic language in the form tьrgъ with the same meaning, or "market" (in Slovenian, Serbian and Croatian "market" is translated instead trg or in tržnica, while in Polish targ and in Old Scandinavian torg ).

An alternative hypothesis that attempts to explain the origin of the name Tergeste, which was reported for the first time by the Augustan geographer Strabo, would have it that this toponym derives from the Latin tergestum, later transliterated into Tergeste. The historical facts that would justify the Latin etymology of Tergeste are linked to the fact that the Roman legionaries would have had to fight three battles to win over the indigenous populations living in the ancient pre-Roman settlement. Tergestum would in fact be the contraction of Ter-gestum bellum (from the Latin ter = three times and gerere bellum = to make war, hence the past participle gestum bellum).

The modern names of Trieste, in the languages ​​historically spoken in the Julian city, are Trieste in Italian, Trst in Slovenian and Croatian, Triest in German, Trieszt in Hungarian and Трст / Trst in Serbian. As for the local languages, the names of the Julian city are Trièst in the Tergestino dialect, Triest in the Friulian language and Trieste in the Trieste dialect and in the Venetian language.

 

History

From prehistoric times to Roman times
The territory where the city of Trieste currently stands and its karst hinterland became the permanent seat of man during the Neolithic period, the period of Prehistory which corresponds to the last of the three that make up the Stone Age. Starting from the late Bronze Age, around the second millennium BC, the culture of the castellieri began to develop in the area, an ethnic group of uncertain origin but probably pre-Indo-European and certainly coming from the sea.

Perhaps the castellieri were of Illyrian origin, an Indo-European population settled in antiquity in the north-western Balkan peninsula (Illyria and Pannonia) and along a part of the south-eastern coast of the Italian peninsula (Messapia).

After the 10th century BC the presence on the Karst of the first nuclei of Indo-Europeans is documented, consisting of communities of Istri, which however, in all probability, were not the first inhabitants of the future Trieste. Between the 10th and 9th centuries BC they came into contact with another Indo-European ethnic group, the ancient Venetians, from which Trieste was then considerably influenced culturally.

The foundation of the first nucleus of modern Trieste in the area of ​​the modern historic center seems to be attributable to the people of the Venetians, as evidenced by the Venetian roots of part of the name (in particular the suffix -este, while the prefix terg- derives, as already mentioned, from the ancient Illyrian) and above all from important finds discovered within the perimeter of the historic center of the city.

However Strabo, an important geographer of the Augustan age, in his Geography, traced the foundation of Tergeste to the Celtic tribe of the Carni, a people historically settled in the eastern Alpine region, and defines it as phrourion, that is a military outpost with defense and junction functions commercial.

Historians agree that later the Roman Tergeste became a castrum, that is a camp in which troops of the Roman army permanently resided: for this reason it also became an important military port.

With the military conquest of Illyria by the ancient Romans (whose most salient episodes were the war against piracy of the Istri, which took place in 221 BC, the foundation of Aquileia in 181 BC and the Istrian war of 178-177 BC) a process of Romanization and assimilation of pre-existing populations began.

Tergeste was colonized during the middle of the 1st century BC, towards the end of the Republican age, then becoming part of the Regio X Venetia et Histria, one of the regions in which Augustus divided Italy in 7 AD.

 

Tergeste overlooked the gulf of the same name in the northernmost part of the Upper Adriatic. The city area was mainly occupied by a hilly slope that became a mountain even in the areas adjacent to the town, which was in fact at the foot of an imposing escarpment that sloped abruptly from the Carso plateau towards the sea. It is likely that the main fortress was located on the slopes of the San Giusto hill.

Following the Roman conquest of Tergeste, which took place around the 2nd century BC, the locality became mūnǐcǐpǐum under Latin law with the name of Tergeste, developing and acquiring a clear urban physiognomy already in the Augustan period. It obtained the status of colony of the Pupinia tribus probably after the battle of Philippi (42-41 BC).

Tergeste obtained, during the principality of Vespasiano, the status of civitas, then reaching its maximum expansion during the principality of Trajan reaching a population, according to Pietro Kandler, of 12,000-12,500 inhabitants, a demographic consistency that Trieste will reach again only in the years sixties of the eighteenth century. In the lower part of the hill of San Giusto, towards the sea, it is still possible today to observe the remains of the ancient Roman Tergeste, despite the numerous modern buildings that partially cover the view.

During the winter of 53-52 BC, Julius Caesar stayed in Aquileia together with legio XV, after the city had been attacked, together with Tergeste, by the Iapids. During the following winter of 52-51 BC, legio XV was sent to winter together with legio VII and the cavalry with Tito Labieno and his lieutenant, Marco Sempronio Rutilo, among the Sequani in Vesontio. For these facts the inhabitants of Tergeste are mentioned in Julius Caesar's De bello Gallico:

"[...] Caesar called Tito Labieno, who sent the fifteenth legion (which had wintered with him) in Cisalpine Gaul to protect the colonies of Roman citizens to prevent them from incurring, through barbarian incursions, any damage similar to in the previous summer it was the turn of the Tergestini who, unexpectedly, had suffered raids and robberies. [...] "
(De bello Gallico, Julius Caesar, 8.24)

Tergeste developed and prospered in the height of the imperial age. The residential nucleus, in 33 BC, was surrounded by high walls (murum turresque fecit, "walls and towers were erected": today the southern gate, the so-called Arco di Riccardo, is still visible) by Octavian Augustus, and enriched with important buildings such as the forum and the theater.

 

The middle Ages

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Trieste experienced a period of strong decay, reducing itself to a small fishing village. It passed under the control of the Byzantine Empire until 788 (in this period the transliteration of its name in Byzantine Greek, Τεργέστη was born), when it was occupied by the Franks. The diocese of Trieste, founded in the sixth century, also obtained full temporal power over its territory in 948. This period, the bishopric of Trieste, lasted until 1295. Following the suppression of the patriarchate of Aquileia in 1751, she became a suffragan of the archdiocese of Gorizia.

In 1098 Trieste was already an episcopal diocese with the Latin name of Tergestum. In the 12th century the city became a Free Municipality, and for the next three centuries the Republic of Venice, the County of Gorizia and the Patriarchate of Aquileia alternated with the control of the city.

In 1368 he entered into conflict with Venice following a serious episode of violence perpetrated against a galley of the Serenissima moored in the port of the city, and because of this he had to first accept submission to Austria and then be sold by the same to the Maritime Republic.

In 1380, during the War of Chioggia, it was occupied by the homeland of Friuli, and with the Treaty of Turin it was forced to give a deed of dedication to Aquileia. With the death of the patriarch of Aquileia Marquardo di Randeck in 1381, the Captain of the castle of Duino Ugo VI called Ugone, in the service of the Duke of Austria, managed to influence the City Council by convincing him to submit to the dominion of Leopold III for the second time of Habsburg (second dedication). The surrender of the city was signed in Graz in 1382: municipal autonomy was maintained, however, no longer under an elective podestà, but under a Captain appointed by the Duke of Austria himself, a role that was held by Hugh himself.

 

The new political situation of the city, of relative tranquility, allowed Trieste, in the first half of the fifteenth century, a good commercial development, which however led it in 1463 to clash with the Republic of Venice. The city requested the support of the Habsburgs against the Serenissima, but the Emperor Frederick III of Habsburg not only did not intervene, but had his Captain and the garrison withdrawn, letting the Venetian army put the city to fire and sword, salt and devastated the countryside.

The rebellion against the House of Austria, which had not maintained the respect of the pacts stipulated with the Free Municipality, was not long in coming. The head of the imperial faction Giannantonio Bonomo and his acolytes were banished from the city; the City Council elected Cristoforo Cancellieri, a valiant soldier, in his place.

The exiles gathered in the Duino castle planning the reaction, finding support in Nikla Luogar of the Jama, Captain of Vipava and trusted man of Frederick III. On New Year's Eve 1468 the fortified gates of Trieste were opened by the traitor Nicolò Massaro, allowing them to take the guards by surprise and to occupy the city without the possibility of opposition. Cristoforo Cancellieri managed to escape, but many were caught on the run or arrested in their beds.

The prisoners were locked up in the tower of the Duino castle and their homes were ransacked. Nikla Luogar had the three Rector judges imprisoned by imposing others of his choice, and began to completely subvert the city systems. On 9 February 1468 he was appointed imperial Captain by Frederick III.

Nikla Luogar of the Jama subjected the City Council to his will, abolished all forms of the ancient statute and personally applied punitive justice. On May 28, 1468, he made the Council vote for the total abolition of the ancient citizens' rights. The new pact of submission was sent to Graz to the Emperor, who happily accepted the new dedication.

Trieste was spared from the attacks of the Ottoman Empire, whose most important military action was a direct incursion into Friuli in 1470, during which Prosecco, today a suburb of Trieste, which is 8 km from the city center, was burned down.

The presence of numerous documents dedicated to viticulture in medieval Trieste testifies to the importance that this activity had in the city economy. In fact, until the development of the maritime merchant activity that followed the proclamation of the free port of Trieste, most of the inhabitants of the small fortified village dedicated themselves to viticulture, which was practiced throughout the municipal territory, in particular on the marly-arenaceous soil that it is located close to the city, especially in the sunniest areas.

Trieste was therefore a fortified village surrounded by vineyards, a feature reproduced in numerous period prints and described by many foreign travelers. The absolutely central role that wine had in the Trieste economy is proven by the presence, both in the ecclesiastical and civil spheres, of tithes and other systems based on the calculation of the profitability of the vineyards.

The most important product of the centuries-old Trieste viticulture is Prosecco wine, which took its name from the castle of Prosecco. On the oldest document that mentions it, Pucinum wine is mentioned as castellum nobile. The production of this wine soon spread beyond the municipal borders of Trieste, spreading in the Gorizia area, in Friuli, in Dalmatia and above all in Veneto, where it developed to become one of the most famous wines in the world.

At the same time its production stopped both in Trieste and in the Trieste Karst, to resume starting from the beginning of the 21st century thanks to the reorganization of the wine sector of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region.

 

Austrian era

In 1719 Charles VI of Austria strengthened the then small village of Trieste by establishing the free port, whose rights were extended during the reign of Maria Theresa of Austria, his successor, first to the Chamber District (1747) and then to the whole city ​​territory (1769).

Maria Theresa of Austria, who ascended the throne in 1740, thanks to a careful economic policy, traced the way that allowed Trieste to become, over time, one of the main European ports and the most important of the Austrian Empire. In the Teresian age the Austrian government invested huge capital in the expansion and strengthening of the airport.

Between 1758 and 1769, works were prepared to defend the pier and a fort was erected. In the immediate vicinity of the port, the Stock Exchange was built (inside the Town Hall, around 1755), to which a square was later dedicated, the Palazzo della Luogotenenza (1764), as well as a department store and the first shipyard in Trieste, known as the squero di san Nicolò.

 

In those years the Borgo Teresiano began to be built, which still bears the name of the empress, to house a population that was growing in the city and that at the end of the century would have reached about 30,000 inhabitants, six times higher than the present one. a hundred years ago. The remarkable demographic development of the city was due, in large part, to the arrival of numerous immigrants coming mostly from the Adriatic basin (Istrian, Venetian, Dalmatian, Friulian, Slovenian) and - to a lesser extent - from continental Europe (Austrians, Hungarians) and Balkan (Serbs, Greeks, etc.).

In a report sent to the Empress Maria Theresa, Count Nikolaus Graf von Hamilton, who held the office of President of the Intendency of the city of Trieste from 1749 to 1768, described the use of languages ​​spoken by the inhabitants of Trieste as follows:

"The inhabitants use three different languages: Italian, Tergestino and Slovenian. The particular language of Trieste, used by simple people, is not understood by Italians; many inhabitants in the city and all those in the surrounding area speak Slovenian."

Trieste was occupied three times by Napoleon's troops: in 1797, 1805 and 1809. In these short periods the city definitively lost its ancient autonomy, with the consequent suspension of the status of a free port.

The first French occupation was very short, as it began in March 1797 and ended after two months, in the following May. Frightened by the imminent arrival of Napoleonic troops, part of the population left the city. Those who remained were ready to rise up against the French soldiers. Having calmed the situation, Napoleon visited Trieste on the following 29 April.

In May 1797, French troops left the city under the treaty of Leoben. The second French occupation began in December 1805 and ended in March 1806. Despite the brevity of the first two occupations, the democratic ideas brought by the Napoleonic troops also began to spread to Trieste, where the awareness of an Italian national identity began to develop.

The third French occupation began on May 17, 1809. From October 15, Trieste was incorporated into the Illyrian Provinces, a French governorate constituting an exclave of metropolitan France, which also included Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia, Veneto Istria, Habsburg Istria, part of Croatia and Dalmatia. The French occupation ended on November 8, 1813 following the Battle of Leipzig.

Returning to the Habsburgs in 1813, Trieste continued to develop, also thanks to the opening of the railway with Vienna in 1857. In the 1860s Trieste was elevated to the rank of capital of the Land of the Austrian Littoral region (Oesterreichisches Küstenland). Subsequently the city became, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the fourth urban reality of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, after Vienna, Budapest and Prague.

Thanks to its privileged status as the only commercial port of Cisleitania, the unofficial name of the western half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, once part of the Holy Roman Empire, Trieste became the first port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Julian city became a strongly cosmopolitan, multilingual and pluri-religious center, as shown by the official Austrian census of December 31, 1910: 51.83% of the population of the municipality (and 59.46% of the historic center) was Italian-speaking, added Italian immigrants from the Kingdom of Italy, who were considered foreigners (12.9% of the inhabitants of the historic center), 24.79% of the inhabitants were Slovenian-speaking (12.64% of the inhabitants of the historic center) , 1.04% German-speaking (1.34% of the inhabitants of the historic center), while there were many minor communities: Serbs, Croats, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, Hungarians, English and Swiss.

In the eighteenth century in the city the Trieste dialect, a colonial Venetian dialect also spoken in a large part of the modern province of Trieste and in the current province of Gorizia), replaced the Tergestino dialect, an ancient local Rhaeto-Romance dialect with a strong correlation with the Friulian language.

 

Italian irredentism

Trieste was - together with Trento - one of the major centers of Italian irredentism, a movement of opinion, an expression of the Italian aspiration to territorially perfect its national unity, freeing the lands subject to foreign domination, which was particularly active in the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in all the territories included in the Italian geographical region or populated by Italian speakers, or connected to Italy by centuries-old historical, linguistic and cultural ties.

As a consequence of the third Italian war of independence (1866), which led to the annexation of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrian imperial administration, for the whole second half of the nineteenth century, increased the interference on the political management of the territory to attenuate the influence of the Italian ethnic group fearing the aforementioned irredentist currents, even reaching clashes. In particular, during the meeting of the Council of Ministers of November 12, 1866, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria outlined a wide-ranging project aimed at the Germanization or Slavization of the areas of the Empire with the aim of eradicating ethnicity. Italian:

"His Majesty has expressed the precise order that action be taken decisively against the influence of the Italian elements still present in some regions of the Crown and, appropriately occupying the posts of public, judicial, masters employees as well as with the influence of the press , work in South Tyrol, Dalmatia and on the coast for the Germanization and Slavization of these territories according to the circumstances, with energy and without any regard. His Majesty reminds the central offices of the strong duty to proceed in this way with what has been established. "

(Franz Joseph I of Austria, Council of the Crown of 12 November 1866)

The prelude to this decision came after the second Italian war of independence, which led to the incorporation of Lombardy to the unborn Italian state (1859). Following this event, the Austrian government favored the formation of a Slovenian national conscience in order to counter Italian irredentism. The awareness of Slovenian identity increased the regression of the use of the Italian language, which nevertheless retained considerable prestige throughout the Austrian period, which ended at the end of the First World War with the annexation of Trieste to Italy. after which Italian became the only official language.

In the city, during the pro-Italian demonstrations that followed a petition signed by 5,858 citizens to the City Council asking for the right to teach the Italian language in state schools, which took place between 10 and 12 July 1868, clashes broke out and violence in the main city streets with local Slovenes enlisted among Hapsburg soldiers, which resulted in the death of the student Rodolfo Parisi, killed with 26 bayonet shots, and of two workers, Francesco Sussa and Niccolò Zecchia.

On February 13, 1902, a general strike began in favor of the Lloyd stokers. The Austrian government, in agreement with the governor of Trieste Leopold von Goess, fearing a union between the Triestine socialist party mainly of Italian ethnicity and irredentist elements, proclaimed a state of siege and martial law on 14 February. During the unfolding of the demonstration, the 55th infantry brigade under the orders of General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf intervened, who proceeded to a violent repression by ordering his men to charge the crowd with bayonets and ending the action with various rifle discharges at height of man. Fourteen people were killed in the action and over 200 injured.

In 1909 the Austrian governor Konrad zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst prohibited the use of the Italian language in all public buildings and with another decree of 1913 Austria officially expelled Italians from municipal administrations and municipal companies. Trieste was also involved in the Croatization process of Venezia Giulia, which took place during the Austro-Hungarian domination. These interference, together with other actions of aiding the Slavic ethnic group considered by the Empire most loyal to the Crown, exasperated the situation by feeding the most extremist and revolutionary currents.

 

According to the official Austrian census of 1910, out of a total of 229,510 inhabitants of the municipality of Trieste (including also the neighboring towns in the center and on the plateau) the following breakdown was recorded on the basis of the mother tongue of use:
118,959 (corresponding to 51.8% of the total population) spoke Italian;
56,916 (24.8%) spoke Slovenian;
11,856 (5.2%) spoke German;
2,403 (1.0%) spoke Serbo-Croatian;
779 (0.3%) spoke other languages;
38,597 (16.8%) were foreign citizens who were not asked for the language of use, including:
29,639 (12.9%) were citizens of the Kingdom of Italy;
3,773 (1.6%) were citizens of the Kingdom of Hungary.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the Slovenian ethnic group of Trieste experienced a phase of demographic, social and economic rise. This explains how irredentism often took on markedly anti-Slavic characteristics in the Julian city, which were perfectly embodied by the figure of Roger Timeus. At the outbreak of the First World War, 128 Triestines refused to fight under the Austro-Hungarian flags and - immediately after Italy entered the war against the Central Powers - they enlisted in the Italian Royal Army.

Among the volunteers who lost their lives in the course of the conflict are the writers and intellectuals Scipio Slataper, Ruggero Timeus and Carlo Stuparich, brother of the more famous Giani Stuparich. The first exponent of this movement is considered the Trieste Wilhelm Oberdank, then Italianized into Guglielmo Oberdan who, for having hatched a plot to kill the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph and found in possession of two Orsini bombs, was tried and hanged in his city Christmas on December 20, 1882.

Particularly active on the front of ideas and propaganda were the exiles from Trieste in Italy and France, where they played a role of primary importance in the foundation, in Rome, of a Central Propaganda Committee of the Upper Adriatic (1916) and, in Paris, of the Italy irredenta association. All the members of the executive bodies of the Committee were from Trieste, with the exception of the Italian Dalmatian Alessandro Dudan.

World War I and the first annexation to Italy
Between 1915 and 1917, during the First World War, the Italian Regia Aeronautica bombed Trieste on several occasions, causing numerous casualties among the civilian population. On November 4, 1918, at the end of the conflict, which saw Italy victorious, the Italian Royal Army entered Trieste under the command of General Carlo Petitti di Roreto, acclaimed by that part of the population that was of Italian sentiment, who declared the state of occupation and curfew.

The sure and imminent annexation of the city and of the entire Venezia Giulia to Italy, in vain opposed at the peace table by the representatives of the newborn Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, who instead demanded the annexation of the city and its hinterland to the Slavic kingdom , was accompanied by a strong tightening of relations between the Italian and Slovenian ethnic groups, sometimes resulting in armed clashes.

After the First World War, the Italian troops militarily occupied the part of Dalmatia promised to Italy by the Pact of London, a secret agreement signed on April 26, 1915, between the Italian government and the representatives of the Triple Entente, with which Italy had committed itself. to go to war against the central empires in exchange for conspicuous territorial compensation which was not fully recognized in the subsequent Treaty of Versailles (1919), which was instead signed at the end of the conflict.

The development of fascism in Trieste was early and rapid. In May 1920 the first voluntary city defense squads were formed in the city, groups of fascist squads under the command of the marine officer Ettore Benvenuti. In the following June, the headquarters of the Trieste student avant-garde were opened, also clearly of fascist inspiration. On 11 July 1920 the so-called "incidents" broke out in Split, during which a Croatian citizen and two Italian soldiers were killed.

Two days later the fascists of Trieste organized a demonstration in the city, during which a young Italian named Giovanni Nini was killed in unclear circumstances. The crowd, incited by the squads led by Francesco Giunta, surrounded the Narodni dom en masse, the greatest city cultural center of Slovenes and other local Slavic nationalities. In the same event, Luigi Casciana, an Italian officer on leave in Trieste, was also wounded in unclear circumstances, who died in hospital a few days later.

 

On the same day some squads devastated the offices of "Jadranska banka", the branch of "Ljubljanska kreditna banka", the printing house of the weekly "Edinost", the Croatian Savings Bank, the Serbian school and numerous other meeting places of the ethnic communities present. in Trieste, in addition to those of the Socialist Party, which had different political ideas from those of the squadristi.

With the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo in November 1920, Trieste definitively passed to Italy, incorporating in its provincial territory areas of the former Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca, Istria and Carniola.

 

The first postwar period and the interwar period

The period between the first and second world war was marked by numerous difficulties for Trieste. The city was in fact hit by a heavy economic crisis, caused by the loss of importance of the port, once the largest of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Commercial activity suffered mainly, but also the financial sector. Trieste lost its centuries-old municipal autonomy, made very broad by the Austrian Crown, gradually changing its linguistic and cultural division as well. Almost all of the German-speaking community in fact left the city after the annexation to Italy, with the Italian element gradually gaining importance.

With the advent of fascism in the national government, a policy of "denationalization" of the so-called alien minorities was inaugurated in Trieste and Venezia Giulia. Starting from the mid-twenties, the Italianization of Slavic toponyms and surnames began, while in 1929 teaching in Slovenian and German was definitively banned from all public schools in the city of all levels and - a little later - schools, cultural clubs and the press of the Slovenian community were closed.

Despite the economic problems and the tense political climate, the population of the city grew in the 1920s, thanks mainly to immigration from other areas of Italy. The first half of the thirties was instead a period of demographic stagnation, with a slight decline in the population of the order of about 1% on a five-year basis (in 1936 there were almost two thousand fewer inhabitants than in 1931). In the same period and, subsequently, until the outbreak of the Second World War, some important urban works were carried out. Among the most important buildings we should mention the University building and the Victory Lighthouse.

The goal was to forcibly assimilate minority ethnic groups. This policy, together with the anti-slave actions of the fascist squads - sometimes punctuated by accidents with deaths and injuries, had very serious repercussions on the delicate inter-ethnic relations. Due to ethnic persecution, around 10% of Slovenes living in the city chose to emigrate to the neighboring Kingdom of Yugoslavia. From the end of the 1920s, the subversive activity of the Slovenian-Croatian anti-fascist and irredentist organization TIGR developed, with some bomb attacks also in the city center.

The Narodni dom, headquarters of the organizations of the Slovenes of Trieste, was set on fire: the Slovenian Hugo Roblek, housed there, died jumping out of the window to escape the flames. The Slovenian independence and terrorist organizations, including the TIGR and the Borba, reacted to the murders perpetrated by the fascists with equal brutality: acts of armed resistance multiplied and violent actions took place against the members of the fascist regime and members of the police or - in some cases - even against ordinary citizens.

In 1930, two attacks were organized in Trieste by the TIGR: the one on the Victory Lighthouse and, much more serious, the one on the editorial staff of Il Popolo di Trieste, which caused the death of the stenographer Guido Neri and the wounding of three people. The police authorities carried out an extensive investigative action, eradicating the resistance cells: the accused (all Slovenians) of various crimes including - in addition to bomb attacks - also a series of murders, attempted murders and fires, were tried by the Special Court for the defense of the State, transferred for the occasion from Rome to Trieste to carry out the first trial of this type in the Julian city.

The trial ended with an exemplary sentence: four defendants were given the death penalty (Ferdo Bidovec, Fran Marušič, Zvonimir Miloš and Alojzij Valenčič), being shot in Basovizza on 6 September 1930, while twelve others were given various prison sentences between two years and six months and thirty years. Two were acquitted instead.

 

World War II

In December 1941 - after the Second World War had already begun - a second trial by the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State was held, again in Trieste, against nine members of the TIGR (Slovenes and Croats) who were accused of terrorism and espionage. Five of them (Pinko Tomažič, Viktor Bobek, Ivan Ivančič, Simon Kos and Ivan Vadnal) were executed in Opicina, the others imprisoned. With this second trial the anti-fascist terrorist organization was annihilated.

The entry into the war of Italy alongside Nazi Germany - in June 1940 - entailed for Trieste, as for the rest of Italy, grief and hardship of all kinds, which worsened in the following years, with the continuation of the conflict. The invasion of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941 rekindled the Slovenian and Croatian resistance in Venezia Giulia, especially starting in 1942.

The war events and, in some cases, a deliberate terrorist policy of the German and Italian occupation troops towards the Slovenian and Croatian populations subject to their domination (villages burned, decimations, indiscriminate killings of civilians), together with the opening of camps of concentration for Slavs on the Italian territory where thousands of innocent people lost their lives, they further deepened the furrow of interethnic hatred that fascism had contributed greatly to create. This hatred was not unrelated to the tragedy that was to be experienced by the city of Trieste and by the entire Venezia Giulia during and after the Second World War.

Since the summer of 1942 there was a resurgence of squadron violence in the Julian city that lasted until the fall of fascism (25 July 1943). On 30 June 1942 a Center for the study of the Jewish problem was established in Trieste - imitating the Roman one - and on the following 18 July the synagogue of Trieste, already targeted a year earlier, was attacked and seriously damaged.

In the months that followed, the Fascists also devastated many Jewish and Slavic shops, but never succeeded in involving the citizens of Trieste, tired of the violence of the squads, in such actions of "political hooliganism". In 1942 the Special Inspectorate of Public Security for Venezia Giulia also began to function, based in a building in Via Bellosguardo, which soon became a place of torture and death for anti-fascists or supposedly so. Known as Villa Triste, it was the forerunner of many other Italian Ville Triste that took their name from it.

 

The German occupation

From the Badoglio proclamation of 8 September 1943, which announced the entry into force of the armistice of Cassibile with which the Kingdom of Italy ceased hostilities towards the Allies, decreeing the de facto beginning of the Italian Resistance against Nazi-fascism, Trieste was at the center of a series of events that have profoundly marked the history of the Julian capital and the surrounding region and which still arouse heated debates.

In September 1943, Nazi Germany occupied the city without any resistance, which formed, together with all of Venezia Giulia, the Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland, a zone of war operations, directly dependent on by the Gauleiter of Carinthia Friedrich Rainer.

Friedrich Rainer tolerated in the city the reconstitution of a headquarters of the Fascist Republican Party, directed by the federal Bruno Sambo, the presence of a small force of Italian soldiers under the command of the general of the Republican National Guard Giovanni Esposito and the installation of a unit of the Guard of Republican Finance.

Rainer reserved for himself the appointment of the podestà of Trieste, then chosen in the person of Cesare Pagnini, and of the prefect of the province of Trieste, who became Bruno Coceani, both welcome to the local fascists, to the authorities of the Italian Social Republic and to Benito Mussolini himself, who knew Coceani personally. During the Nazi occupation, the Risiera di San Sabba - now a National Monument and museum - was used as a prison and extermination camp for political prisoners, Jews, Italian and Slavic partisans, with crematorium ovens that operated at full capacity. Later - in the early 1950s - the Risiera di San Sabba was used as a refugee camp for exiles from Julian, Rijeka and Dalmatia fleeing the territories that had passed under Yugoslav sovereignty.

Despite the harsh repression carried out by the Nazi and Fascist authorities, hundreds of inhabitants of the municipality of Trieste joined the Slovenian partisan units operating in Venezia Giulia to counter the troops of the German occupiers. Many of them died in partisan guerrilla actions or in German concentration camps, as well as in the Risiera. Their names are carved on the monuments erected in their memory in almost all the hamlets of the city.

 

The German and Italian authorities committed numerous crimes against the civilian population; most of these were made in Trieste itself. On 3 April 1944 the Nazi-Fascists shot 71 people at the Opicina shooting range, chosen at random from among the prisoners of Trieste prisons in retaliation for the explosion of a time bomb which the previous day, in a cinema in Opicina, had caused the death of 7 German soldiers.

The cadavers of the Slovenes were used to test the new crematorium built in Risiera di San Sabba which from then, until the date of the liberation of Italy, was used to burn the bodies of over 3,500 prisoners, directly suppressed by the prison staff operating there.

The Risiera di San Sabba, in addition to being used as a sorting camp for over 8,000 deportees from the eastern war front who were then assigned to the other Nazi concentration camps, was also used in part as a place of detention, torture and elimination of prisoners suspected of subversive activity against the Nazi regime.

The presence of the crematorium in the Risiera di San Sabba testifies that it was not only used as a place of sorting and detention of prisoners, but also as a death camp. After the war, the Risiera, during the allied occupation of Trieste, was used as a reception center for Italian refugees from the Julian-Dalmatian exodus. With the D.P.R. n. 510 of 15 April 1965, the President Giuseppe Saragat declared the Risiera di San Sabba a national monument as "the only example of a Nazi concentration camp in Italy".

On 23 April 1944 the massacre of via Ghega took place. In retaliation for a bomb attack on the "Soldatenheim" club in which 4 German soldiers had died, 51 political prisoners were taken from the Trieste prison of Coroneo who, after being taken to the site of the attack, were hanged in every corner and window of the Palazzo Rittmeyer in via Ghega then leaving the corpses exposed to public view for five days, before burying them in a common grave.

 

The race for Trieste and the Yugoslav occupation

The insurrection of the Italian and Yugoslav anti-fascist partisans in Trieste was characterized by an anomalous development. On 30 April 1945 the National Liberation Committee of which Don Edoardo Marzari was president, made up of all the Italian anti-fascist political forces with the exception of the Communists, proclaimed a general insurrection. At the same time the brigades of the Yugoslav partisans, with the support of the Italian Communist Party, attacked from the karst plateau just outside the Julian city. The clashes took place mainly in the areas of Opicina, which is located on the plateau, of the Porto Vecchio, of the castle of San Giusto and from inside the Palace of Justice, in the city center. The remainder of the city was liberated.

The Nazi command surrendered only on May 2 to the New Zealand avant-gardes, which preceded the arrival of New Zealand general Bernard Freyberg by one day. Tito's Yugoslav partisan brigades, however, had already arrived in Trieste on 1 May. Their leaders quickly convened a city assembly made up of Yugoslav citizens and two Italians. This occupation took place following the so-called "race for Trieste", that is the advance towards the Julian city made, for the purposes of post-war policy and in a competitive manner, in the spring of 1945 by the Yugoslav Fourth Army and the Eighth Army British and that was won by the Yugoslavs, as evidenced by the arrival of the aforementioned Yugoslav brigades of Tito, who anticipated the New Zealanders.

The city assembly composed of Yugoslav citizens and two Italians previously mentioned, proclaimed the liberation of Trieste. In this way, Tito's partisans were politically presented as the true liberators of the Julian city in the eyes of the allies, pushing the non-communist partisans of the Italian National Liberation Committee to go underground. The Yugoslavs displayed on the buildings the Flag of the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, as well as the flag of Italy with the red star in the center and the communist red flags with hammer and sickle.

 

The Yugoslav brigades, which arrived in Trieste in forced marches to precede the Anglo-Americans in the liberation of Venezia Giulia, did not contain any Italian partisan units included in the Yugoslav Army, instead sent to operate elsewhere, although many Trieste (Italian and Slovenian) were there included. The allies (specifically the New Zealand Second Division, which was the first to arrive in the city), recognized that the liberation had been accomplished by Tito's partisans and in return asked for and obtained direct management of the port and of the communication routes with the Austria. In fact, not yet aware of Hitler's suicide, the Anglo-Americans were preparing the way for an invasion of Austria and therefore of Germany.

The Yugoslav army took advantage of the situation by assuming full powers. It then appointed a Political Commissioner, Franc Štoka, a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party. On May 4, orders 1, 2, 3 and 4 were issued by the Yugoslav authority present in Trieste, called the City of Trieste Command (Komanda Mesta Trst), which proclaimed a state of war by imposing a curfew after the fighting was over and uniformed the time zone Trieste to Yugoslav time.

These measures also limited the circulation of vehicles and at the same time decreed the removal from their homes of hundreds of citizens, suspected of having little sympathy for the communist ideology that led the Yugoslav brigades.

Among these there were not only fascists or collaborationists, but also non-communist fighters of the Italian Liberation War or even communists themselves who opposed the annexation of Trieste to Yugoslavia, who were deported en masse to various prison camps, such as the concentration of Borovnica or that of Goli Otok from which they never returned. Many of them were killed directly and thrown into the Trieste sinkholes.

In Basovizza, a fraction of the municipality of Trieste, in May 1945 an unspecified number of corpses of prisoners, soldiers and civilians killed by the army and Yugoslav partisans were hidden inside the well (Foiba di Basovizza) (President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro declared the Foiba di Basovizza a national monument by decree of 11 September 1992). A U.S. memorandum of May 8 stated:

“In Trieste the Yugoslavs are using all the familiar terror tactics. Every Italian of any importance is arrested. The Yugoslavs have taken complete control and are carrying out the conscription of Italians for forced labor, taking over banks and other valuable properties and commandeering grains and other supplies in large quantities. "
(The memorandum drawn up by the US State Department dated May 8, 1945)

On 8 May they proclaimed Trieste an autonomous city within the Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. On public buildings they waved the Yugoslav flag flanked by the Italian Tricolor with the red star in the center.

The city experienced difficult moments, of great fear, with people debated between profoundly different ideas: the annexation to Yugoslavia or the return to Italy. In this climate, confiscations, requisitions and summary arrests took place. There were also cases of personal vendettas, in a population exasperated by the war events and by the oppositions of the fascist period. In vain did the Triestines solicit the intervention of the Allies.

The Allied command and the Yugoslav command finally reached a provisional agreement on the occupation of Trieste. On 9 June 1945 in Belgrade, Josip Broz Tito, having verified that Stalin was unwilling to support him, concluded the agreement with General Alexander. A zone A was created, entrusted to the allied administration, which included Trieste and Gorizia and went up along the Isonzo in Tolmino and Caporetto up to the Tarvisio border to go down to the enclave of Pola, and a zone B, entrusted to the administration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which included Istria, Rijeka and the Kvarner Islands.

 

The return of Trieste to Italy

On February 10, 1947, the Treaty of Paris was signed between Italy and the allied powers, which established the Free Territory of Trieste (FTT), consisting of the Trieste coast along the northwestern part of Istria, temporarily divided by a border passing through south of the town of Muggia and administered by the Allied Military Government (zone A) and the Yugoslav army (zone B), pending the creation of the constitutional bodies of the new state.

 

The situation was clarified only on 5 October 1954, when with the London Memorandum the Zone A with the city of Trieste and its international free port passed from the allied military administration to the Italian civil administration, while Zone B passed from the administration military to civilian Yugoslavia. The following municipalities in zone A then passed to the Italian administration: Duino-Aurisina, Sgonico, Monrupino, Trieste, Muggia and San Dorligo della Valle. The transfer of power to Zone A officially took place on 25 October 1954.

The agreements also provided for some territorial adjustments in favor of Yugoslavia (the so-called "Gardening operation"), which slightly changed the boundaries of zone A with the sale of some areas belonging to the municipality of Muggia; altogether the change of borders affected about ten km². On 4 November 1954, during the celebrations of the Day of National Unity and the Armed Forces, a national holiday commemorating the Italian victory in the First World War, considered the completion of the process of unification of the Risorgimento thanks to the annexation of Trento and Trieste, the President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi went to the Julian city on an official visit. In the course of his short speech he stated:

«... You from Trieste, in order to reach the goal, have discussed clause by clause, word by word, for many months the agreement or signed. You have defended, meter by meter, that territory which in your belief should have remained united with Trieste. Let me congratulate you on showing courage. By operating in this way, in silence, you are deserving of the Italian homeland. "..."

In zone A there were 5,000 American soldiers of the TRUST (TRieste United States Troops) and 5,000 British soldiers of the BETFOR (British Element Trieste FORce). Italy took possession of zone A on 26 October 1954; the allies withdrew between 25 and 27. With the constitutional law of January 31, 1963, which came into force on February 16, the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region was then formed, of which Trieste became the capital.

It was necessary to wait for the Treaty of Osimo of 10 November 1975 for a definitive settlement between Italy and Yugoslavia, with the consequent end of the territorial claims between the two countries, which de jure sanctioned the territorial separation that had already been created de facto in following the London Memorandum (1954), making definitive the borders between Italy and the then Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Treaty of Osimo therefore concluded the historical phase that began in 1947 with the peace treaty of Paris, which decreed the cession to Yugoslavia of a large part of Venezia Giulia and of the entire Quarnaro (i.e.Rijeka and the Kvarner islands, the almost all of Istria and the karst plateaus to the east and north-east of Gorizia) and the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste including the current province of Trieste and the Istrian coastal territories from Ankaran to Novigrad (today, respectively, in Slovenia and in Croatia).

The failure to activate the procedures for the establishment of the constitutional bodies of the Free Territory of Trieste effectively prevented it from officially constituting itself. The subsequent transfer of the civil administration power of the Free Territory of Trieste to Italy (zone A) and Yugoslavia (zone B) created the conditions for the subsequent developments that eventually led to the Treaty of Osimo.

 

Trieste in the European Union

In 2004, together with other European countries, Slovenia became part of the European Union, and in 2007, it joined the Schengen Convention, thus eliminating the figure of Trieste as a border city. In particular, the convention regulates the opening of borders between the adhering countries; since 2007, therefore, the Italian-Slovenian borders have ceased to be an impediment to the free passage of goods and people.

Initially signed on 19 June 1990, in a first version, by the Benelux countries, West Germany and France, other countries of the European Union also joined the subsequent and homonymous convention, including Italy (1990) and, indeed, Slovenia (2004).

 

Monuments and places of interest

Religious architectures

Cathedral of San Giusto
The Cathedral Basilica of San Giusto is the main Catholic religious building in the city of Trieste. It is located on the top of the homonymous hill overlooking the city. As reported by most Triestine historians, the current appearance of the basilica derives from the unification of the two pre-existing churches of Santa Maria and the one dedicated to the martyr San Giusto, which were incorporated under a single building by Bishop Rodolfo Pedrazzani da Robecco between the years 1302 and 1320 to provide the city with an imposing cathedral.
The first news about the cathedral dates back to 1337, when the bell tower of the former church of Santa Maria was covered with a thick wall to support the new building. The work on the bell tower ended in 1343, but those on the church lasted until the end of the 14th century. The bell tower was originally higher, but in 1422 it was struck by lightning and was reduced to its current height. After the definitive dedication of the city to Austria (1382), the then emperor Leopold III of Habsburg appointed the first German bishop of Trieste, Enrico de Wildenstein, who on 27 November 1385 consecrated the main altar of the cathedral, putting an end to the works. In November 1899 Pope Leo XIII raised the sacred building of Trieste to the dignity of a minor basilica.

Serbian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and Saint Spyridon
The Serbian Orthodox temple of the Holy Trinity and San Spiridione is the church of the Serbian Orthodox community of Trieste. Work of the architect Carlo Maciachini (1869), it stands on the site of the pre-existing church of San Spiridione, which was built in 1753. The architectural complex, located in the Borgo Teresiano near the Grand Canal of Trieste, reflects a Byzantine taste which is characterized by a dome higher than the four bell towers, due to the blue hemispherical caps and the large mosaic decorations that adorn the external walls. Nine large statues by the Milanese sculptor Emilio Bisi adorn the facade.

Synagogue of Trieste
The synagogue of Trieste, inaugurated in 1912, located between via San Francesco, via Donizetti and via Zanetti in Trieste is considered one of the largest Jewish religious buildings in Europe, second in size only to the Great Synagogue of Budapest, reflecting its economic importance , cultural and social aspects of the Jewish communities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the first annexation of Trieste to Italy, which took place in 1920 at the end of the First World War, the Julian city became, together with the synagogues of Rome, Genoa and Livorno, one of the four great synagogues of the twentieth century on Italian soil.

Church of Santa Maria Maggiore
The church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, better known as the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, also known as the baroque church of the Jesuits, has a baroque style. Built in the 17th century by the Jesuit company, it has been managed by the Franciscan friars since 1922. The church is located in via del Collegio, at the foot of the San Giusto hill and near the basilica of Christ the Savior (formerly called the basilica of San Silvestro), in the immediate vicinity of the historic center of Trieste.

Church of Sant'Antonio Taumaturgo
The church of Sant'Antonio Taumaturgo, commonly called the church of Sant'Antonio Nuovo, is the main religious building in the Borgo Teresiano and in the center of Trieste. The design of the church dates back to 1808, but the works did not begin until 1825. The facade of the building is characterized by six Ionic columns. Also on the main facade, in the attic, there are six statues sculpted by Francesco Bosa in 1842, depicting San Giusto, San Sergio, San Servolo, San Mauro, Sant'Eufemia and Santa Tecla. The church is located in the square of the same name, close to the Canale Grande.

Marian shrine of Monte Grisa
The national temple to Mary Mother and Queen (in Slovenian Svetišče na Vejni), the original name of the religious building which was later elevated to a sanctuary, is a Catholic church north of the city of Trieste, located at an altitude of 330 meters on the mountain Grisa (in Slovenian Vejna), from where you have a spectacular view of the city and the gulf. It was designed by the architect Antonio Guacci on a sketch by the bishop of Trieste and Koper Antonio Santin: the triangular structure evokes the letter M as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. The construction took place between 1963 and 1965, while the inauguration, by the bishop himself, took place on May 22, 1966. The sanctuary is characterized by an imposing structure in reinforced concrete, with the presence of two superimposed churches.

 

Church of San Pasquale Baylon
The church of San Pasquale Baylón is a Catholic place of worship in Trieste. It is located in the Chiadino district, inside the large park of the noble villa of Baron Pasquale Revoltella, in via Carlo de Marchesetti 37. The church, in neo-Romanesque style with a Greek cross plan, was built between 1863 and 1866 on project by the architect Giuseppe Josef Andreas Kranner of Prague and was consecrated on 17 May 1867 by bishop Bartolomeo Legat.
The church of San Pasquale Baylón stands on a base under which there is a crypt where two sarcophagi are buried which preserve the bodies of Baron Pasquale Revoltella and his mother Domenica. A testamentary disposition of 13 October 1866 by Baron Pasquale Revoltella constituted a Pious Foundation with the obligation, for the chaplain, of the school education and spiritual assistance of the villagers of the place as well as the celebration of two masses every year in suffrage for himself and his mother ( one on 17 May, the feast of Saint Pasquale Baylón, and one on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption).

 

Civil architectures

Post Office Building
The Palazzo delle Poste di Trieste is an important historical building of the Julian city. The main entrance is in Piazza Vittorio Veneto. Inside is the Trieste headquarters of the Italian Post Office and the Postal and Telegraphic Museum of Central Europe. The Palazzo delle Poste in Trieste was built between 1890 and 1894 by the architect Friedrich Setz.
The area occupied by the Customs (built on the ancient salt pans that once occupied the area on which the Borgo Teresiano currently stands) was destined for the new building. The building, arranged on a rectangular area of ​​almost 7 100 square meters, was conceived from the beginning to house both the post and telegraph offices, and those of finance, so the interior is structured in two distinct bodies of 3 500 square meters each. The building currently houses the Trieste branch of the Italian Post Office on the side of Piazza Vittorio Veneto and the Central European Postal and Telegraphic Museum on the ground floor.

Justice palace
The Palace of Justice is a judicial building in Trieste which is located near the Foro Ulpiano. In February 1895, during the Austro-Hungarian era, the Provincial Diet of Trieste and the Civic Magistrate decided to build a single architectural complex that contained all the judicial offices, prisons and the archive of the Tavolari Books, at the time located in different areas of the city, including in via Santi Martiri (now via Duca d'Aosta), in via della Sanità (now via Armando Diaz) and in the Bordeaux building.
The Austrian government asked for financial help from the municipality of Trieste which, after an initial refusal due to lack of funds, agreed to sell to the Treasury a land of 37 214 m3 at the subsidized price of 324 919 Austro-Hungarian florin, with a contract stipulated on 25 July 1898.

Galatti Palace
Palazzo Galatti, commonly called Palazzo della Provincia, is a nineteenth-century palace in Trieste, located in the city center, in Piazza Vittorio Veneto but with accesses also from the streets of Rome, Galatti and of the Geppa. The building consists of three floors above ground.
Until 30 September 2017, the date of suppression of the institution, it was the registered office and the most important operational headquarters in the province of Trieste. Following the implementation of the L.R. 26/2014 Reorganization of the Region system - Local Autonomies in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Arrangement of inter-municipal territorial unions and reallocation of administrative functions, the property passed to the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia-Giulia for which it houses the offices of the Presidency, Social Services and Policies and Higher School Building of the UTI Giuliana.

State Railways Building
The Palazzo delle Ferrovie dello Stato is a nineteenth-century palace in Trieste, located in the center of the city, in Piazza Vittorio Veneto but also with access from the streets of Milan, Galatti and Filzi. The building consists of five floors above ground. Currently, following the implementation of a plan to move the offices of the Railways to other structures, the building is empty and has been put up for sale. The building of the Departmental Directorate of the State Railways was built between 1894 and 1895 on a project by the architect Raimondo Sagors. The building housed on the ground floor some commercial activities including Ignazio de Brull's shop, while in the rear part of the building complex, in the Fascist era, there was the Teatro del Dopolavoro Ferroviario, which became Cinema Vittorio Veneto, inaugurated in 1949.

 

Palace of the Austrian Lieutenancy
The palace of the Austrian Lieutenancy, or the palace of the Prefecture of Trieste, is one of the most important buildings dating back to the Habsburg rule present in Trieste. The main and monumental entrance is in piazza dell'Unità d'Italia, but the building also overlooks piazza Verdi and via San Carlo. Formerly the seat of the Austrian Lieutenancy, today it houses the seat of the Prefecture of Trieste. The palace stands on the site of the old Palazzo Governiale, built in 1764 by order of Maria Theresa of Austria according to the design of Giovanni Fusconi, where once the offices of the Imperial Arsenal of Trieste were located. Originally the structure consisted of only two floors, to which a third one was added in 1825. Demolished in 1899, the old building gave way to the new building built between 1901 and 1905 on a design by Emil Artmann.

Town Hall Building
Immediately after the decision to bury the old mandrake, a stretch of water reserved for the mooring of small boats also present in the port of Trieste (the related works then took place between 1858 and 1863), the square was subject to a total redesign. In fact, the idea of ​​a space completely open to the sea prevailed, surrounded by buildings and with the town hall placed as a front base, with the consequent demolition of the walls and buildings that then closed the square from the sea side. On the place designated to give rise to the modern Palazzo del Municipio stood several houses, a loggia and some buildings. In 1875, the Trieste architect Giuseppe Bruni won the tender for the design of the new building. The new building consisted of a single monumental body dominated, in the central part, by a tower. The Town Hall is dominated by the bell tower on which two Moors are installed, friendly called by the Trieste residents Micheze and Jacheze (from the Slovenian Mihec and Jakec), also designed by Bruni, who since 1876 mark the passage of time every quarter of an hour , as well as the civic bell with the town halberd.

Model Building
The building, located between the Palazzo del Municipio and Palazzo Stratti, was also built by the architect Giuseppe Bruni between 1871 and 1873, taking the place of the old churches of San Pietro and San Rocco that were located in the same place. The building was designed following indications from the municipality of Trieste and was nicknamed "Model Building" because it was to serve as an architectural example for the restructuring that was taking place in the then Piazza Grande. At the beginning Palazzo Model was used as a hotel, later called Hotel Delorme, which stopped operating towards 1912. In place of the hotel business, part of the municipal offices found space. In 2007, following the devastation that was caused by a fire, the municipality of Trieste sold it to the then municipal company AcegasApsAmga with the aim of building its new headquarters. On the top floor of the building you can see telamons, that is male statues intent on holding up the tunic.

Carciotti Palace
Palazzo Carciotti is an eighteenth-century palace in Trieste, located in the city center, at the beginning of the Grand Canal of Trieste. The building was built on the aforementioned area that was once used for salt pans. The client was the Greek merchant Demetrio Carciotti, who settled in Trieste in 1775. Enriched with the trade of cloths from Bohemia, at the end of the eighteenth century Demetrio Carciotti bought the five houses that were located on the right side of the canal entrance. For the construction of this palace, Demetrio Carciotti entrusted the architect Matteo Pertsch, who presented his project in 1798. Immediately began the construction works, which Giovanni Righetti supervised, which lasted until 1805.

Tergesteo Palace
Palazzo del Tergesteo in Trieste is an important building in the city. The main entrance is in piazza della Borsa, but the building also overlooks piazza Verdi. Formerly the seat of the Trieste stock exchange, it has been renovated several times, the last of which between 2009 and 2011. In 1838 the land where Palazzo del Tergesteo now stands was sold by Giuseppe Brambilla to the Tergesteo company, established with the aim of erecting a majestic multifunctional building in the center of Trieste. The company structure is divided into 1 500 shares, among which the shareholders of Austria Karl Ludwig von Bruck and Baron Pasquale Revoltella are remembered. Construction work began in 1840 and ended in 1842.

 

Palazzo del Lloyd Triestino
The Lloyd Triestino building in Trieste is an important construction of the city. The main entrance is in Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia, but the building also overlooks via dell'Orologio, along the Mandracchio bank and via del Mercato Vecchio. Formerly the headquarters of the shipping company Lloyd Triestino di Navigazione, later Lloyd Triestino, it has been renovated several times, and now houses the offices of the presidency and the council of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Lloyd Triestino, established in 1833, had its first headquarters in piazza Tommaseo, then moved to piazza della Borsa.

Trieste maritime station
In 1924 the administration of the General Warehouses decided to build a maritime station for passengers in Trieste. The Fascist government included this construction among the public works of immediate execution, given its importance. The Trieste maritime station, which was designed by Umberto Nordio and Giacomo Zammattio, was built between 1926 and 1930. The building, located on the Molo dei Bersaglieri, is the result of the transformation of a simple warehouse in the port of Trieste, which during the Habsburg domination was mainly used for the storage of wines imported from Italy.

Aedes Palace
Palazzo Aedes, commonly called the Red skyscraper, is a twentieth-century palace in Trieste, located in piazza Luigi Amedeo Duca degli Abruzzi, that is, at the meeting point between the Grand Canal of Trieste and the banks. It was built between 1926 and 1928 next to the Gopcevich palace on a project by the architect Arduino Berlam. The building draws inspiration from New York's new red brick skyscrapers, and is known as the first true skyscraper built in Trieste.

Gopcevich Palace
Palazzo Gopcevich houses the Carlo Schmidl Civic Theater Museum. The building, with its characteristic white and red plaster, is located in the center of the city, in the Borgo Teresiano, on the bank of the Grand Canal of Trieste and was built in 1850 on a project by the architect Giovanni Andrea Berlam on behalf of the Serbian shipowner Spiridione Gopcevich , hence the name of the building. The façade overlooking the canal, with an eclectic style, composed of a red and yellow Greek design, is also enriched by statues, friezes and medallions that recall the protagonists of the battle of the Piana dei Merli, fought on 15 June 1389, the day of San Vito, from the army of the alliance of the Serbian kingdoms against the Ottoman army, in the Piana dei Merli, a plain in today's Kosovo. The interior of the building features highly refined environments, both in the furnishings and in the inlaid floors, as well as in the decorated ceilings. The last radical restoration of Palazzo Gopcevich dates back to 1988.

San Marco coffee
Caffè San Marco is a historic café located in via Battisti 18. Founded in 1914, the place is famous for having always been one of the main meeting places of the city's intellectuals. Caffè San Marco is housed in a building erected in 1912 by Assicurazioni Generali, who rented the ground floor to Marco Lovrinovich, a native of Parenzo, who inaugurated the historic café on January 3, 1914. The place gradually became the main meeting place for young students and intellectuals. of the city, but not only: the café, in fact, began to host young Italian irredentists, also functioning as a laboratory for the production of false passports to allow anti-Austrian patriots to escape to Italy. For these reasons, in the middle of the First World War, on 23 May 1915, a group of soldiers from the Austro-Hungarian army broke into the premises, devastating it and decreeing its permanent closure. Lovrinovich himself was brutally expelled and transferred to Liebenau prison in Upper Austria, because he had voluntarily caused trachoma with a bacterial solution in order not to be enrolled in the imperial and royal Austro-Hungarian army, just mobilized for the Italian front, given the declaration of war just declared by Italy, which thus made its entry into the world conflict.

Trieste lighthouse
The lighthouse of the Lanterna di Trieste is located on top of the Fratelli Bandiera pier, at the west end of the city, marking the entrance to the old port. The construction of the lighthouse, which came into operation on 11 February 1833, was commissioned by the governor of the city Carlo Zinzendorf based on a project by Matteo Pertsch. The optical group is supported by a stone column with a cylindrical base which rises from a Maximilian tower embattled with two orders of thrones. In addition to the function of lighthouse, in fact, the construction also had to carry out a function of defense of the port. The foundations of the lighthouse rest on what was once the Scoglio dello Zucco.

 

Victory Lighthouse
The Vittoria lighthouse was built between January 15, 1923 and May 24, 1927, by the Italian architect Arduino Berlam. In addition to fulfilling the functions of a lighthouse for navigation, illuminating the Gulf of Trieste, the Faro della Vittoria also functions as a memorial monument in honor of the fallen of the sea during the First World War, as evidenced by the inscription placed on its base:
"Shine and remember the cadavts svl mare (Mcmxv - Mcmxviii)"
(Inscription on the base of the Victory Lighthouse dedicated to the fallen of the sea during the First World War)
In particular, the Roman numerals Mcmxv and Mcmxviii recall the years of beginning and end of the First World War for Italy, namely 1915 and 1918.

Villa Necker
Villa Necker is a historic residence in neoclassical style, located in via Università 2. Villa Necker stands on the area originally occupied by the land owned by the "Santi Martiri". Much of the criticism attributes the construction of the villa to the architect Giacomo Marchini, based on a project by the French Champion, who arrived in the city in 1784 and to whom we also owe the design of Villa Murat, which no longer exists today. The structure, set within a large park, has three floors above ground.

Villa Engelmann
Villa Engelmann is located in via di Chiadino 5 in front of the Beata Vergine delle Grazie church. The villa and the adjacent park were designed at the behest of Francesco Ponti in 1840 with the construction works that lasted three years. In 1888 Villa Engelmann was bought by Frida Engelmann, while in 1938 it was inherited by Guglielmo Engelmann. The whole area was ceded to the city of Trieste by his son Werner.

Villa Sigmundt
Villa Sigmundt is located in Via Rossetti at numbers 44 and 46. It was designed by Giovanni Andrea Berlam in 1861 on commission of Edmund Sigmundt, a rich Trieste sponge merchant. Built in the Chiadino district, it has remained unchanged since its inauguration.

Castelletto Geiringer
The Castelletto or Villa Geiringer rises in a dominant position on the Scorcola hill. It was built as the personal residence of the Trieste architect Eugenio Geiringer in 1896.

 

Military architectures

Kleine Berlin anti-aircraft tunnels
Kleine Berlin (little Berlin in German. Actually incorrect, because in German Berlin is not feminine, since we should say Kleines Berlin) is the largest complex of underground anti-aircraft tunnels dating back to the Second World War still existing in Trieste. Given its hilly conformation, Trieste is crossed by numerous anti-aircraft tunnels, but the Kleine Berlin complex is particular for its size, its extension, and for the fact that it can be visited by the public.

Miramare Castle
Miramare Castle was built as the residence of the Hapsburg court in the current homonymous district of Trieste at the behest of Maximilian of Hapsburg-Lorraine, Archduke of Austria and Emperor of Mexico, to make it his home to share with his wife Charlotte of Belgium . In recent times the castle has been transformed into the historical museum of the Miramare castle, which registered, in 2016, 257 237 visitors, while the park of the Miramare castle registered 833 300 visitors.

Castle of San Giusto
The castle of San Giusto is a fortress-museum located on the hill of the same name. As a historic residence, it was restored in the 2000s and was used as a civic museum by the Municipality of Trieste, whose structure has belonged to the municipal property since 1930. On the Lalio Bastion, the Tergestino Lapidarium was inaugurated on 4 April 2001, consisting of inscriptions, sculptures, bas-reliefs and fragments of Roman architecture. It can be visited only in part: in addition to the lapidary, the Chapel, the Caprin Room, the large internal courtyard - site of events in the summer - and the stands, from which you can enjoy a wide view of the city below, are in fact accessible.

Duino Castle
Duino Castle is located in the municipality of Duino-Aurisina, in the province of Trieste. The castle has been owned for over 420 years by the Della Torre family, in particular by the Della Torre branch of Valsassina first and then by the Dukes Della Torre and Tasso. Since 2003 the castle is - together with its park - open to the public. From the manor you can enjoy a vast panorama of the steep rocky walls overlooking the sea. In the park there is a bunker used during the Second World War. The history of the Della Torre and Tasso family is linked to the management of postal services, as it exercised this activity in various European countries, including Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands from the 15th century to the end of the 19th century.

 

Muggia Castle
The castle, which overlooks the small port of Muggia in an elevated position, is owned by the sculptor Villi Bossi and his wife Gabriella. It is open to the public on special occasions, in particular for cultural and musical initiatives. The first nucleus of the castle was a tower built by the patriarch of Aquileia Marquardo di Randeck in 1374 in Borgolauro, a modern central district of the neighboring town of Muggia, located along the sea. Its construction lasted until 1399.

 

Maritime architectures

Grand Canal of Trieste
The Grand Canal of Trieste is a navigable canal located in the heart of the Borgo Teresiano, in the historic center, halfway between the Trieste Centrale station and Piazza Unità d'Italia, with its entrance from the San Giorgio del Porto Vecchio basin. It was built between 1754 and 1756 by the Venetian Matteo Pirona, further digging the main collector of the salt pans, when these were buried to allow the urban development of the city outside the walls. It was built so that boats could go straight to the city center to unload and load their goods.

Molo Audace
The Molo Audace is located on the banks of Trieste, in the heart of the city, a few steps from Piazza Unità d'Italia and the Grand Canal of Trieste. In 1740 the ship San Carlo sank in the port of Trieste, near the shore. Instead of removing the wreck, it was decided to use it as a basis for the construction of a new pier, which was built between 1743 and 1751 and was named after San Carlo. The Molo Audace separates the San Giorgio basin from the San Giusto basin of the Porto Vecchio. On November 3, 1918, at the end of the First World War, the first ship of the Italian Royal Navy to enter the port of Trieste and dock at the San Carlo pier was the destroyer Audace, whose anchor is now exposed at the base of the Faro della Vittoria of Trieste. In memory of this event, in March 1922, the name of the docking from Molo San Carlo to Molo Audace was changed. At the end of the pier itself, in 1925, a bronze compass rose was erected, with an epigraph in the center that recalls the historic landing of the Audace ship, and on the side the words
"Cast in enemy bronze III November Mcmxxv"
(Inscription present on the Molo Audace)

The Roman numeral III November Mcmxxv (3 November 1925) recalls the date of the ceremony that commemorated, seven years later, the docking of the destroyer Audace, and with it the subsequent landing of the Italian sailors in the Trieste just liberated by the Austro-Hungarian troops.

 

Railway architectures

Opicina tramway
The Opicina tramway (tram de Opcina in Trieste dialect, Openski tramvaj in Slovenian), also known as the Opicina railway, one of the tourist attractions of the city of Trieste, is a panoramic interurban tramway operated by Trieste Trasporti. Its unique feature in Europe is that it has a steep slope of about 800 m (up to 26%) along which the cars are pushed (uphill) or held back (downhill) by shield wagons tied to a funicular system. . The service, classified as line 2, has an urban route in the center of Trieste (at sea level) and an interurban section connecting with the hamlet of Villa Opicina on the Carso plateau, at 329 m asl. In operation since 9 September 1902, it is just over 5 km long.

 

Streets and squares

Unity of Italy Square
Piazza Unità d'Italia is the main square of Trieste. It is located at the foot of the San Giusto hill, between Borgo Teresiano and Borgo Giuseppino. Rectangular in plan, the square opens onto the Gulf of Trieste on one side, while on the other it is surrounded by numerous palaces and various public buildings. Overlooking the square are the headquarters of various bodies: the Trieste town hall, the building of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Council and the prefecture of the capital. The square has a total area of ​​12 280 m². In ancient times it was called Piazza San Pietro, from the name of a small church there, then changed its name to Piazza Grande, while during the Austrian period the name was changed to Piazza Francesco Giuseppe, from the name of the emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. It took its current name in 1918, when the city was annexed to Italy.

 

Stock Exchange Square
Piazza della Borsa is one of the main squares of Trieste. Also known as the second good city lounge, the square was the economic center of the city throughout the 19th century. It is the square immediately adjacent to Piazza Unità d'Italia that continues, narrowing, until the beginning of Corso Italia, an important city artery. The place where the square stands was once just outside the city walls. In fact, at the point where the passage with Piazza Unità is located, there was the gateway to Vienna. The houses that delimit the square towards the outskirts of the city instead follow the line of the ancient walls towards the Riborgo tower.

Neighborhoods
Borgo Teresiano
The Borgo Teresiano is a district of Trieste built around the middle of the 18th century and commissioned by the then emperor of Austria Charles VI and - after his death - by Maria Theresa of Austria. The neighborhood was designed to give some respite and development to the city that was witnessing the flourishing of port trade. It was obtained from the burial of the ancient salt pans of Trieste by urbanizing an area outside the walls. With its orthogonal road axis, it is one of the first examples of modern city town planning. The Borgo Teresiano develops between via Carducci, corso Italia, the Trieste Centrale station and the banks.

Borgo Giuseppino
Borgo Giuseppino is a district of Trieste designed and built starting from the end of the 18th century. The name derives from the Austrian Emperor Joseph II of Austria, son of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who continued the reform period already initiated by his mother. The village extends outside the walls of the ancient Porta Cavana reaching the land of the Lazzaretto di San Carlo. After the city had expanded into Borgo Teresiano, a place formerly occupied by the ancient salt pans, it needed new and numerous spaces, given the dizzying growth it was witnessing. The project for the construction of the district was started in 1788 by the architect Domenico Corti.

 

Archaeological sites

Tergeste
The strategic importance of the ancient Roman city of Tergeste, which later gave rise to modern Trieste, is also indicated by its mighty walls. Made of stone blocks, they surrounded the city starting from the hilly areas down to the sea. The ancient Roman Trieste, in fact, had a port in the Campo Marzio area, where the railway station of the same name is now located and the related railway museum, equipped with modest-sized stopovers along the coast, which were located under the promontory of San Vito and near the modern town of Grignano, where there were also some patrician villas, extending up to Santa Croce. The water needs of the city were satisfied at the time by two aqueducts: that of Bagnoli and that of San Giovanni di Guardiella.
Fundamental for the economic development of the city was a Roman road built by the Emperor Flavius ​​Vespasian, called Via Flavia, which was built between 78 and 79, which over the decades became the most important road in the Augustan region of Venetia et Histria. Its route developed from Tergeste along the Istrian coast passing through Pola and Fiume; it finally reached Dalmatia, but it has been assumed that it was originally supposed to extend as far as Greece. It was one of the most important routes among those that did not start directly from Rome.
Another important road that passed through the ancient city was the Via Gemina, which connected Aquileia to Emona (modern Ljubljana) and which was built after 14 BC. from legio XIII Gemina. The Via Gemina followed the first stretch of the ancient via dell'ambra: when they split, the latter then continued up to the Danube towards Carnuntum.

Roman theater of Trieste
The Roman theater of Trieste is located at the foot of the San Giusto hill, in the historic center, on the edge of the old city, between via Donota and via del Teatro Romano. At the time of its construction, the theater was located outside the city walls by the sea, which at that time reached that area. On its tiers, also built taking advantage of the natural slope of the hill, from 3 500 to 6 000 spectators could be accommodated, depending on the various sources. The construction of the theater is dated to the end of the 1st century BC, with its expansion occurring at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. It was probably built at the behest of Quinto Petronio Modesto from Trieste, procurator and flamine of the emperor Trajan, mentioned in various inscriptions, who according to other sources only took care of the renovations.

 

Early Christian basilica of Trieste and the temples to Jupiter and Athena
The early Christian basilica of Trieste, built between the 4th and 5th centuries, contains some very valuable mosaics, a tangible sign of the wealth of the local church and the city of Tergeste until the late imperial age. The remains of the early Christian basilica were discovered under the current Cathedral of San Giusto. On the hill of San Giusto some remains of the temples of Jupiter and Athena are still visible. Of the latter, some architectural structures have been preserved in the foundations of the cathedral, identifiable from the outside thanks to special openings in the walls of the bell tower and in the subsoil (through access from the Civic Museum of History and Art of Trieste).

Civil Basilica of Trieste
To the north of the temples to Jupiter and Athena there was the forum (which functioned as the main square) which was divided into three naves with an internal apse and which was completed by a portico with an adjoining civil basilica. The donor was Quinto Baieno Blassiano, Trajan's procurator who exercised his office before 120-125.

Arch of Riccardo
According to some sources, the Arch of Riccardo is one of the Roman gates of Trieste dating back to the 1st century BC, probably built under the emperor Octavian Augustus in the years 33-32 BC. The forms of the architectural decoration allow us to date the current form of the arch to the Claudian-Neronian age or perhaps to the Flavian age (50-75 AD). According to other sources, however, it is one of the entrances to the sanctuary of the Magna Mater. It is a single fornix arch, 7.2 m high, 5.3 m wide and 2 m deep. It also has an upper crown, devoid of decoration.

Antiquarium in via del Seminario
The Antiquarium in via del Seminario is an archaeological site in the city of Trieste, where a section of the Roman walls is preserved. The archaeological remains of the Antiquarium in via del Seminario are among the oldest in the Julian city. In fact, they date back to the late Republic, i.e. the end of the 1st century BC. In the Antiquarium you can observe a stretch of the walls, built by Octavian (when he had not yet assumed the title of Augustus) between 33 and 32 BC. for the defense of the colony of Tergeste. The preserved section is 4 meters long and 2.4 meters wide. The external faces of the walls are made of sandstone blocks, while the internal filling is of sand mixed with rock. At the base of the walls a channel for the drainage of water is visible.

Antiquarium of via Donota
The Antiquarium of via Donota is an archaeological site of the city of Trieste, located in the lower part of the San Giusto hill, where it is possible to visit what remains of a domus and a burial ground from the Roman age. The domus was built at the end of the 1st century BC, a period in which the entire part of the slope of the hill of San Giusto facing the sea was subject to a work of arrangement, thanks to the construction of terraces on which it was later built. At the end of the 1st century AD the domus was abandoned, so starting from the second century a part of it was reused as a pagan necropolis.

Cattinara Castle
The castelliere of Cattinara, which is located between the valleys of Longera and Rozzol, was inhabited from prehistoric times to Roman times. In prehistoric times its inhabitants lived on its summit, which was later flattened, while in Roman times along its southern slope, which was better sheltered from the winds. The finds discovered in this castle are numerous and very varied, such as shards, animal remains and tools. Worthy of note are two bronze fibulae, one of which belongs to the culture of La Tène, it being understood that the necropolis has not been found, a discovery that would perhaps allow its dating.

Roman aqueduct of Val Rosandra
in the nearby Val Rosandra there are remains of a Roman aqueduct built in the first century which originally was 14 kilometers long reaching the center of Tergeste. Perhaps along its sides there was a Roman road with small permanent lookout posts. The Roman aqueduct of Val Rosandra remained in use until the sixth century (or, according to other sources, until the seventh), when it was irreparably damaged. In the eighteenth century it was still fairly well preserved, and therefore the Trieste municipal administration considered its possible restoration to supply the city, which was in full development, with drinking water. The idea was later abandoned when it was realized that it was more convenient to exploit other sources of water. The remains of the Roman aqueduct that reached the 21st century have a length of about one hundred meters.

 

Antiquarium of Borgo San Sergio
The Antiquarium of Borgo San Sergio consists of two areas, one where the archaeological finds are located and the other where the finds are exhibited as in a classic museum. In the first section there are the remains of a Roman house dating back to the 1st century, while in the exhibition part there are remains found during the excavations carried out at the Roman theater in Trieste.

 

Natural areas

Torri di Slivia cave
The Torri di Slivia Cave is located in the municipality of Duino-Aurisina, in the province of Trieste, at the foot of the small village of Slivia, an agricultural center inhabited by a predominantly Slovenian population of around 130 inhabitants. It was named after the first explorers who mapped it at the end of the 19th century for the numerous stalagmite towers that characterize it. The relief of the cave, which dates back to 6 January 1885, was the work of the engineer. Costantino Doria, of the Triestine Mountaineering Society. The first expedition entered from the main well, which has been known since ancient times. The works to create the artificial entrance for tourist use were started in 1964. In 1967 the internal path and the iron staircase were created, while in 1968 the first tourist tickets were removed.

Remembrance Park
The Parco della Rimembranza is located in the historic center of Trieste. Among the urban interventions of the Fascist era, the arrangement of the area that later gave rise to the park, which is located on the hill of San Giusto, certainly stands out. The works were started with the creation of the wide Via Capitolina, a panoramic road that climbs gently around the hill until it reaches the cathedral. The entire slope of the hill between this road and the castle was consecrated to the memory of the "fallen in all wars" fought by Italian soldiers after national unity, which took place in 1861. For this reason, the Parco della Rimembranza is dotted with rough stones. of karst stone with the names of known and unknown fighters. At the top stands the Monument to the Fallen, 1935, by Attilio Selva, dedicated to the Trieste volunteers who fell in the First World War. There is also a plaque dedicated to the Triestine fallen of the First World War who fought for the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian army.

Marine nature reserve of Miramare
The Miramare Marine Nature Reserve is located in the Gulf of Trieste and winds all around the Miramare promontory, where the Miramare Castle of the same name also stands. The fully protected area, which is 30 hectares with a width of 200 km and a length of 1.8 km that extends along the coast, is surrounded by a buffer zone (established by order of the Trieste Harbor Master's Office n. 76/95 and 28/98), of another 90 hectares for a width of further 400 meters with partial protection where professional fishing is prohibited. The maximum depth that is reached in the reserve is 18 meters. The coast is formed by a limestone rock typical of the Karst, a territory of which the Miramare promontory represents a small extension of the coast.

Napoleonic road
The Napoleonic road is included from the Borgo San Nazario car park, located on the outskirts of the Prosecco district, up to the Obelisco di Opicina pitch. This road is therefore entirely located in the municipality of Trieste. The official name of the path is Strada Vicentina, from the name of the engineer Giacomo Vicentini who designed the route and began construction in 1821. The current conformation is due to the improvements carried out immediately after World War II.

 

Territory

Trieste, overlooking the homonymous gulf in the northernmost part of the Upper Adriatic, is located between the Italian peninsula and Istria, a few kilometers away from the border with Slovenia in the historic region of Venezia Giulia.

In particular, Venezia Giulia is an Italian historical-geographical region located in the extreme north-east of the Italian peninsula, between the Julian Alps and the Adriatic Sea, including the lands between the Gulf of Trieste, the Gulf of Fiume and the Karst, a plateau limestone rock belonging to the Dinaric Alps that stretches between the north-east of Italy, Slovenia and Croatia.

The name Venezia Giulia was conceived in 1863 by the linguist from Gorizia Graziadio Isaia Ascoli to contrast it with the name Litorale, created instead by the Austrian authorities in 1849 to identify the region.

Venezia Giulia, together with Venice Tridentina and Venezia Euganea, constitutes the Triveneto, a term that appeared in some cultural circles in the mid-nineteenth century, shortly after the second Italian war of independence, coined in 1863 by Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, with the intent to mark lands such as Venice Tridentina and Venezia Giulia with Italian character (without irredentist nuances), which at the time were still subjected to the Habsburg rule that only after the First World War were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.

The city area of ​​Trieste is mainly occupied by a hilly slope that rises in altitude to mountainous terrain even in the areas adjacent to the town. The inhabited area of ​​Trieste is located between 2 and 450 meters above sea level on a rocky, calcareous and arid landscape, known for its caves and sinkholes, at the foot of an imposing escarpment that descends sharply from the Karst towards the sea. The highest point in the municipal area reaches 674 meters (Monte Cocusso).

The municipality of Trieste is divided into various climatic zones, depending on the distance of the area from the sea and its altitude. Characteristic of this area is the abundance of red earth, soil with an accentuated presence of red clay fraction resulting from the erosion of limestone, particularly suitable for the cultivation of wine grapes.

 

Hydrography

In the district of the city of Trieste there are numerous watercourses, some important - Timavo river, Rosandra torrent, Rio Ospo - and others less known but no less relevant from the hydrogeological, historical and naturalistic point of view. Many of them flow underground in the Julian city covered by the road surface.

The springs of these minor courses, which generally have lengths of a few kilometers (in some cases, even less), are due to the outflow of rainwater that falls on the karst plateau. Once free to flow outdoors, they have been channeled since the city developed urban planning, an event that began in the second half of the eighteenth century, in special pipes. Even today these waterways run through the undergrounds of today's via Carducci (previously called via del Torrente), via Battisti (formerly Corsia Stadion), viale XX Settembre (formerly viale dell'Acquedotto), via delle Sette fontane or piazza tra i Rivi .

To the south of the city flows the Rio Ospo, which marks the geographical border with Istria. Furthermore, the modern city area between the railway station, the sea, via Carducci and Piazza della Borsa, Borgo Teresiano, was built in the 18th century after the burial of the previous salt pans by order of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

 

Climate

The climate of the city of Trieste, according to the Köppen classification, falls within the humid subtropical type. Thanks to an intermediate latitude between the North Pole and the equator, and to its coastal position, the city of Trieste enjoys a mild climate in winter and rather warm, but not torrid, in summer.

Relative to the official thirty-year reference period of world climatology (IPCC / WMO) 1971-2000, the annual average of temperatures at the various meteorological stations in Trieste was 15 ° C, while the average temperatures of the coldest month (January) settled around 5.8 ° C and those of the hottest month (July) slightly above 24 ° C.

In the winter months the temperatures, at least on the coast, rarely drop below freezing; vice versa, in the karst fractions, negative night lows are often recorded. There are also few days along the coast with snow, fog or hail. The average annual humidity is 64%, while the daily temperature range is 4.5 ° C: both are among the lowest in Italy.

 

Given the peculiarity of the city, it can be said that the center of Trieste, which developed along the coast, has relatively mild temperatures and a fair amount of sunshine, while the hamlets and karst localities developed on the plateau behind at a height between 200 and 500 m have a decidedly more continental climate: in Basovizza, located at about 370 meters above sea level, the average annual temperature is around 11 ° C with an average of 1.5 ° C for the coldest month (January) and the hottest month. (July) of 20.6 ° C.

Exceptions to the generally mild climate are the days, rare in some years, more frequent in others, in which the Bora blows, a katabatic wind from east / north-east, which blows with particular intensity especially towards the Upper and Middle Adriatic. Trieste wedges itself from the hinterland, channeling itself along the low passes that open up between the mountains behind the city, to descend on the inhabited center and on the homonymous gulf. Although due to adiabatic compression the temperature of the air, descending on the city, still warms by three or four degrees, the gusts considerably increase the perception of cold even with relatively mild temperatures.

Exceptionally, the bura blows for very short periods even in summer, this time very hot, always coming from east north east, therefore from the continent, which is warmer, towards the sea, sometimes raising temperatures even above 35 ° C. The gusts of continental air coming from east-north-east, heading towards the Adriatic outlet, acquire further speed, and in exceptional cases, in the open sea, they can reach 50 knots, as recorded in December 1996. In some areas the bora is stronger and more frequent than in others, and only the area of ​​the Trieste coast that goes from Miramare to Sistiana is sheltered from the effect of this wind.

Very interesting for the climate trend is the variation that has occurred in the last hundred years in the frequency of the bora and generally of the eastern winds, which decreased by 28 days a year, while the sirocco and southern winds, in the same period, increased in frequency by 26 days. nodded.

Given the proximity of the reliefs, short rains can occur throughout the year (this is the main inconsistency with respect to the typical Mediterranean climate), while during the summer months rainfall is still rare and mainly of a stormy nature (July is generally the month more dry). Precipitation peaks in frequency and intensity in November and April, when the flow of Atlantic perturbed currents usually drops in latitude.

 

Botany

The city of Trieste is one of the best known in Italy from a botanical point of view. The urban flora, object of study since the second half of the 19th century, was the subject of an in-depth census by F. Martini, who mapped the distribution of 1024 species and subspecies. The great floristic richness is due to several factors, among which the main ones are:

The penetration into the urban fabric of areas with natural vegetation, such as the Bosco del Farneto or the Villa Giulia Park
The transitional characteristics of the city from a climatic point of view, with a strong temperature gradient and rainfall from the coast to the plateau
The coexistence in the city of both arenaceous and calcareous substrates,
The presence of important commercial, industrial and port areas that favor the presence of alien neophytes. The urban flora of Trieste can be consulted through an interactive portal that allows even non-botany experts to identify its species.
The historical gardens of relevance from a botanical point of view in Trieste are the Muzio de Tommasini historical garden, the historical garden of Villa Revoltella, the historical garden of Villa Engelmann, the historical garden of Villa Sartorio, the historical garden of Villa Cosulich, the Skabar historic garden, the historic garden of piazza Libertà, the historic garden of via Catullo, the historic garden of piazza Hortis, the Passeggio Sant'Andrea, the historic garden of piazza Carlo Alberto, the historic Basevi garden, while among the worthy urban parks of mention are the Farneto Park and the Villa Giulia Park.

The carnation of Trieste grows in the Trieste area, an Illyrian endemism also present in the Julian city.