AMONG the cities of Italy, Trieste is an anomaly. For it lost its economic raison d’être when, in 1918, it ceased to be the main Mediterranean port of the Austrian empire and, severed from its Istrian hinterland, became part of Italy. Originally settled by the Veneti, who gave the town its name, Trieste became a walled Roman colonia under Octavian; long held by Byzantium it subsequently was a commune. Pressure from Venice led the city to appeal to the Duke of Austria in 1368, and thereafter it was drawn into the Austrian orbit. But it was not until 1719, two years after he had challenged Venetian control of the Adriatic, that the Emperor Charles VI declared Trieste a free port.
Before surveying the modern city, it makes sense to search out the evidence of its predecessor on the hill behind. The walk uphill could take in the scruffy husk of the Roman theatre, which must once have had breathtaking views over the gulf, and the elegant Triumphal Arch, built for Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, in 33 BC. The way climbs steeply uphill between the Museo Civico and the atmospheric Orto Lapidario, with numerous Roman inscriptions, to the cathedral. Dedicated to the local martyr, San Giusto, this takes the place of a Roman temple, parts of the foundations of which can be seen to the north. The jambs of the main door are sections of a Roman stela with portraits of men of the Barbia family; to the left of the front is the campanile, which was remodelled in 1337–43. The church is unexpectedly wide, the central nave flanked by four aisles. The mosaic of the left apse is of the twelfth century. In a chapel of 1364 on the extreme left, behind an elegant baroque wrought-iron screen made in Ljubljana, is the treasury: on the west wall is a distinguished Crucifixion by an artist close to Paolo Veneziano. The detailed account of the walls of Jerusalem in this remind us that the cathedral itself was protected in turn by the Roman walls and by those of the medieval Rocca, now replaced by the formidable Castello built in phases by the Emperor Frederick III from 1470 and under his successors over a period of some two centuries.
Cathedral, jamb of the west door, incorporating Roman portraits of the Barbia family.
The commercial centre of the city has long been on the lower ground beside the sea. A walk might start by the Canal Grande, dug in 1756, dominated at the landward end by the late neoclassical church of Sant’Antonio. Heading southwards down the Riva there are two fine neoclassical buildings, the Palazzo Carciotti, built in 1802–5 for a Greek merchant by an architect of German extraction, and the slightly earlier Teatro Comunale. A little way behind the latter is the Piazza della Borsa, with the Borsa Vecchia of 1806–9 by the Marchigian Antonio Molari, who interpreted classical models to particular effect. A road from the piazza leads to the east corner of the rectangular Piazza Unità d’Italia. The name belies the fact that this was the centre of the Austrian city. The ambitious Fountain of the Continents at the eastern end is of 1751, but the huge buildings that line the piazza (except to the north-west where it is open to the sea) are an orchestrated statement of prosperity in the last phase of imperial rule. The procession of neoclassical palazzi continued southwards along the Riva.
The importance of Trieste to the later Habsburgs is expressed in the Castello di Miramare, some eight kilometres up the coast. Built in 1856–60 for the ill-fated Archduke Maximilian by the German architect Karl Junker, this seems to grow from a low cliff above the water. It is substantially larger than one might at first imagine. The archduke’s taste was that of his time and rank, and enough of the original contents survive for us to leave with a clear idea of this. It is touching that his wife, Charlotte, chose in 1857 to be painted in Milan wearing the costume of the Brianza by Jan Frans Portaels (whose Jewess of Cairo serves to remind us of the religious tolerance of the Dual Monarchy), for within two years both Milan and the Brianza had been lost to Italy. The archduke’s journey to Smyrna is commemorated by a series of pictures, but we are shown nothing of the tragedy of his attempt to win an empire in Mexico.
Antonio Molari, Borsa Vecchio, 1806–9.