TriesteSloveniaCroatiaAustriaTriesteVenice142 GOURMET TRAVELLER
O
ut on a limb in the extreme
north-east corner of Italy, far closer
to Vienna than to Rome, Trieste
was part of the Austro-Hungarian
empire for centuries. And you
can tell. On arrival, during a brief
reconnaissance drive around the centre, I see the
Habsburg presence everywhere. Piazza by piazza, what
seems like the entire dynasty appears in a succession
of solemn statues – from Leopold I, Holy Roman
Emperor from 1604-1705, to Empress Elizabeth,
“Sisi”, the consort of Emperor Franz Joseph, who
came to a sticky end when she was stabbed to death
by an Italian anarchist in Geneva. No wonder the
city was once nicknamed “Vienna by the Sea”.
Down on the promenade, from the Canal Grande
where small boats rest at their moorings to the Savoia
Excelsior Palace, Mitteleuropa meets the Med. On one
side are grandiose 18th- and 19th-century buildings,
on the other piers and jetties stretch into the water like
fingers. Halfway along, the city’s pièce de résistance,
the Piazza dell’Unità d’Italia, is lined on three sides
by the Neoclassical and Baroque-influenced façades of
grand civic and commercial palazzi. At the eastern end,
the immense Palazzo del Comune, or town hall, looms
over the waterless Fountain of the Four Continents,
an homage to Trieste’s penchant for international trade.
The point is reiterated by the western end, the feature
that gives the piazza its wow factor. It opens directly
onto the sea, hence onto the world.
To turn their empire from continental to maritime,
the Habsburgs developed the city into a commercial
seaport. The Imperial Maritime Government was based
here from 1850, and by the end of the 19th century
Trieste was being dubbed the “third entrance of the
Suez Canal”. A local nobleman, Barone Pasquale
Revoltella – whose sumptuous town house on Piazza
Venezia is now a museum and well worth a visit – was
once the largest private shareholder in the Suez Canal
Company. “A colossal emporium and a prodigious
trading centre” is how Jules Verne described Trieste in
1874, and the bill of lading “Via Trieste” was familiar
on docksides the world over.
After World War I, the city became Italian and
Mussolini laced it with more overblown architecture,
this time in the Fascist style. During World War II, it
was first commandeered by the Germans, then carved
up by the Allies. Contested by the former Yugoslavia at
the start of the Cold War, Trieste was eventually handed
back to Italy in 1954. It now found itself amputated
from its hinterland, hanging from the rest of the ➤