Three Days in Trieste
An improvised solo trip to Italy's old Habsburg port on the Adriatic
Trieste sits at the very top of the Adriatic, on a narrow strip of land between the limestone plateau of the Karst and the sea, so close to the border that Slovenia begins practically in its suburbs. Its story is different from the rest of Italy’s: for two centuries it was the great port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the window to the sea of an empire that barely had a coast. The Habsburgs declared it a free port, ships from half the world unloaded there, and the shipping companies and insurance houses that grew around that trade built the city that still stands today: rows of white neoclassical palaces facing the water, wide avenues, and the Piazza Unità d’Italia, one of the few great squares in Europe that opens directly onto the sea.
Then the empire dissolved, the borders moved, and Trieste woke up as an Italian city with a port built for a country that no longer existed. It never fully recovered that central role, and maybe that is why it feels the way it feels today: elegant but calm, slightly out of time, as if the city were still waiting for ships that stopped coming a century ago. The mixture of cultures is still there, Italian, Slavic and Central European at once, and so is the coffee tradition the Austrians left behind, kept alive in historic coffee houses where writers like James Joyce and Italo Svevo used to spend their hours. It is not a city of big attractions; it is a city with an atmosphere, and that is exactly what I found.
The trip itself was an out-of-the-blue choice. One Sunday I realized I had a bit of free time ahead, and with that thought, the idea of travelling appeared on its own. I knew I wanted to go to Italy, but the exact place was undecided, until I saw that the flights to Trieste were affordable and that the city had some history running through those white walls. That was enough. I booked the trip that same Sunday, and the very next day, from the 18th to the 20th of May, I was there.
Funnily enough, the trip started before even landing: I spent the entire flight talking with an elderly man who was travelling with his wife to visit their son in Udine. And once in Trieste, it felt like I was isolated from the rest of the world. I barely looked at the phone; I just enjoyed the nice weather and the fresh air coming from the sea, and learned about the history of the place by visiting the same spots people from the last century used to visit too.
I spent those days without much of a plan. I wandered through the old town and along the Canal Grande, which brings the sea a few blocks into the city, with its small boats moored in line and the church of Sant’Antonio closing the view at the end. I climbed up to the hill of San Giusto, where the cathedral and the old fortress stand, and from where you can see the whole gulf and the rooftops of the city descending towards the water. I also sat in two of the legendary coffee houses of the city. At Caffè San Marco I had my first ever slice of Sacher cake, with an espresso on the side; at Caffè degli Specchi, the one of the mirrors, I went for a cappuccino, and afterwards I tried the ice cream too. They are still what they were a hundred years ago, with their marble tables, dark wood and unhurried waiters, and it is easy to understand why those writers made a second home out of them. And when the day was ending, I walked out onto the famous Molo Audace, the stone pier that stretches into the gulf a few steps from Piazza Unità, and spent the sunsets there, enjoying the breeze and the soothing melody of the sea.
The photo is from Miramare Castle, a bus ride away along the coastal road. The castle stands on a promontory over the sea, completely white, and this is how it first appeared to me: framed between the trees of its park, with the flag on the tower and a seagull crossing the grey sky. Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, younger brother of the emperor, built it in the 1850s as a home for himself and his wife Charlotte, but he left for Mexico to become emperor there before the works were even finished, and he never came back: he was executed a few years later, and Charlotte lost her mind waiting for him. The residents who came afterwards did not stay long either, and many of them also met their end far from home, which fed the legend that whoever sleeps in Miramare is destined to die in a distant land.
That was the highlight of the visit for me: walking through those rooms and gardens, prepared with so much care for a life that never happened, and feeling that the people who were supposed to live there never really did for too long, exactly as the story goes.