John and I spent three months in Trieste last year, with the goal of finally becoming reasonably proficient in Italian. The teachers at Piccola Universita Italiana were, to a woman, professional and industrious and thanks to them we actually made some progress. We probably would have become fluent if we hadn’t been more interested in lunches and naps.
The city was a dream, for a number of reasons—the large discounted apartment probably ranking at the top. Here are some of the other notable features.
- The Sea
The thing we liked the best, being in the old city, was that it is right by the Gulf of Trieste and so offers views, sunsets and breezes. Walking along the lungomare, you can hear the clinking stays on masts at the marina, and watch the giant European herring gulls floating on the air. Towards the old train station, you find an old fashioned bathing establishment, Bagno Marino ‘La Lanterna’ Pedocin, which still has separate bathing areas for men and women.
Related to the Sea is the Weather and the Bora—Trieste’s famous North Wind. Most Italians will warn you of the Bora as if it is some kind of natural disaster. Being from New Zealand, home of the Roaring Forties, I like wind. While the Bora only pops up occasionally, you appreciate it for mixing things up and making me feel alive (though I definitely needed a warm hat). For someone who likes wind, most of Italy feels like a granny’s conservatory where no one opens the windows for fear of getting pleurisy.
2. Piazza d’Unita
This grand public square is one of the only piazzas in Italy that isn’t centered on a church. One of the most prominent mansions along its edges used to be the headquarters of Österreichischer Lloyd, Austro-Hungary’s largest shipping company. After WWI the company became Lloyd Triestino and since 1998 it’s belonged to Evergreen Marine. The building now serves as something related to the government. I hear that it opens to the public exactly once a year and there are always long lines.
We walked to the piazza most days so got to know its familiar sights: the Palace of the Prefecture of Trieste, which is most noticeable at sunset, when the light catches gold detail on the surface mosaics; the big Municipal Building (in the photo below); the ugly Fountain of the Four Continents; and the Grand Hotel Duchi d’Aosta, where the bigwigs used to stay.
A favourite haunt of ours on Saturday mornings was Café degli specchi, although it could get super crowded when the cruise ships docked. This place had an international breakfast menu, and some of the dishes were a bit strange. For example, the American breakfast included baked beans and the Hawaiian breakfast included a krapfen.
On the sea side of the piazza are two flag poles donated in 1932 to the city by drivers from WWI. The photo above shows a detail of one of the statues at the base of one of the flagpoles.
3. Writerly Vibes
Trieste has traditionally been a city full of neurotic writers, nomads, misfits and inbetweeners. One of the things that Trieste is most pleased about itself with is the fact that James Joyce, the It Boy of 20th-century literature, lived here and liked it. You can take Joyce itineraries and see the café where he wrote The Dubliners, the house where he lived, the place he bought his cheese etc. (I made the last one up). There are several ‘James Joyce’ pubs, but to be honest you find them as far south as Lecce.
Not only did Joyce live here but he also championed a local writer who went by the pen name Italo Svevo—real name Hector Aaron Schmitz. There is some speculation that he may have been one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses. Probably Svevo’s most famous work is The Conscience of Zeno (1923) in which the protagonist tries (and fails) to give up a prodigious smoking habit.
The Svevo Museum is a couple of little rooms in a big palazzo that also houses a library. A kindly but very serious woman took me around the museum, stopping in front of every item and explaining everything in tedious detail, and in Italian that I was only getting 30 percent of. “This was Schwartz’s violin, this was his china cabinet, this was his pipe…”
There were a few things related to Joyce as well, including lots of letters. One thing that was pretty humorous was a Joyce doodle of his Leopold Bloom character.
Another writer who was born in Trieste and lived there the last forty years of his life was Lucio Saffarano (1929-1998), who was also a Physicist and artist.
Here are two of his haikus of his, clearly inspired by his native city:
II
through gray seawater
a very high wind
beats the changeless tower
III
you leaf through the expectation of love
westerly clouds decline
in lost triumph or sunset
4. Boisterous Buildings
Trieste is one of those cities (like Buenos Aires or Glasgow or Melbourne) that had a few periods of dazzling prosperity, when people had money to spend on architecture and wanted to make a splash. Those glory days may have passed but the buildings are still there, zany as ever.
5. The Riseria
Every city has its dark side and Trieste’s is pretty durn dark. From a balcony of the Municipal Building in the Piazza d’Unita (see above), Mussolini announced the Racial Laws (institutionalizing anti-semitism in Italy) on September 19, 1938.
When the Fascist regime collapsed in 1943, German forces created the Occupational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, the capital of which was Trieste. Part of their brief during this occupation was, of course, to round up Jews, Communists, Roma, Slavs, Partisans and other ‘undesirables.’ For this purpose they commandeered the Risiera di San Sabba, a former rice-husking facility. This is now a museum and monument to victims.
Most of the Jews were collected here were transported to Auschwitz or other camps in Germany. The majority of the approximately 3,000 people killed ‘on site’ were political prisoners, particularly Yugoslav and Italian partisans.
6. Maximilian’s Miramare
Maximilian I of Mexico (1832-1867) is a figure who looms large in this city. There is a pretty impressive statue of him in the old town vaguely gesturing out to sea.
From 1854, the younger son of the Archduke Franz Karl of Austria was Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian navy (yes, Austria had a navy back then). He got busy setting up a port and ship-building yard in the city. In 1857 he sent the SMS Novara to circumnavigate the globe and to conduct research–several natural scientists were on board. Among the botanical, zoological and cultural material brought back were the first cartography of New Zealand and some coca plant leaves, which led to the first scientific analysis of the leaves and the discovery of three chemical bases: cocaine, ecgonin and hygrin.
In 1856 he purchased land near Trieste that incorporated a rocky spur on the coast. He ordered the construction of a castle and the creation of a park. It was to be called Miramare. It wasn’t finished until after 1864, when Maximilian’s departed for Mexico with his wife Charlotte, to take up the position of Emperor of Mexico. The French Minister of War François Claude comte du Barail frankly expressed doubt about the wisdom of this decision: “If you succeed in bringing order out of this chaos, fortune into this misery, union into these hearts you will be the greatest sovereign of modern times. Go poor fool! You may regret your beautiful castle of Miramar!”
Sure enough, the big silly got shot.
7. Museum of Far Eastern Art
This is a small museum but we liked enough to go several times and dragged our friends Michael and Jenny along to see it when they visited. There was plenty of food for thought and discussion of Judge Dee, the semi-fictional magistrate and statesman of the Tang Court made internationally famous by the Dutch writer Robert van Gulik.
8. “J.J. Winckelman” and his Museum of Antiquity
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) was the son of a poor cobbler who revolutionized Classical Studies, only to get stabbed in Trieste. His most famous work, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (“The History of Art in Antiquity”), pretty became the foundational text of Greek and Roman art history. He was a huge celebrity in his day, a big influence on Goethe and, from 1763, Prefect of Antiquities for Pope Clement XIII.
Winckelmann was pretty much openly gay and his appreciation of male beauty is apparent in his descriptions of artwork. While the circumstances of his murder are unclear, it seems likely that it was a chance assignation that went wrong. A young cook named Francesco Arcangeli stabbed him with a knife he’d bought the day before. Shocked by the murder, the city exacted a punishment that seems pretty extreme–Arcangeli was strapped to a wheel and beaten to death.
In honor of the art historian, and perhaps as an apology for being the place of his death, Trieste named their collection of antiquities after Winckelmann.
