Photo by Jurjen Drenth
You see them sitting in the early evening by the canal, under the statue of James Joyce, or else in the heart of Trieste's Piazza dell’Unita, where the sea meets the square.
The woman with her grey hair piled high upon her head and the greyhounds quasi-pulling her wheelchair like a chariot. The man with his flat cap and his too-big but still so formal suit.
In Trieste, funerals outpace births by a factor of three to one, but my friend Stefania is intent on showing me that there is more to her city than staid elderly elegance. She grabs my arm and marches me at impossible speed toward Piazza dell’Unità, announcing in brisk and perfectly accented English that Trieste is the most beautiful, the most civilized, city in Italy.
She takes me to her favorite bar, newly-opened, tucked away in the ghetto’s heart, where an enormous table has been fitted atop a repurposed World War I cannon the owner found in Bologna. She demands a spread for me: thin-sliced prosciutto and spice-encrusted salami, Liptauer Condito, a Central European sheep’s milk cheese spread seasoned with anchovies, caraway and spice.
For Stefania, Trieste’s Austro-Hungarian heritage has found renewal in the development of the EU – Slovenia is part of the Schengen Zone; Croatia will be later this year. “I go to Slovenia for dinner at least once a week,” she says. “I love the food. I speak some of the language.”
At the shoe shop where she works, she says up to 90 percent of her weekend customers are Slovenian or Croatian. “They’re in love with our style,” she says, with pride.
“This is a dying city,” says Matteo. We have been sitting for hours at a pizzeria in one of Trieste’s hidden squares, a labyrinth of turns away from the waterfront that dwarfs the city’s western edge.
It’s the independence movement you’ve probably never heard of.
The Adriatic doesn’t exactly have the best reputation when it comes to Italian fare. “It’s not real Italian,” many of my Roman friends say of the north.
Trieste’s famous melancholy reaches its zenith in the nearby village of Duino. Dominated by its 14th-century castle – the historic home of the Austro-Hungarian Thurn und Taxis family – the whole town feels in thrall to its aristocratic past.
Hello Trieste, with its unique position on the coast of the Adriatic looking west to the rest of Italy. Thanks to its centuries as part of the Astro-Hungarian Empire, the city enjoys many other differences – both social, cultural and historical – that set it apart from the Italian mainland.
If you like people-watching and architecture, then Trieste is the city for you. Bordering with Slovenia – signs are in both Italian and Slovene languages – it is a cultural and historical gem but also an industrial city with large docks on the Adriatic coast.
Piazza dell’Unita is the beating Austro-Hungarian heart of Trieste.
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