Trieste ( , ; ; ) is a city
and seaport in north eastern Italy
.
It is
situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between
the Adriatic
Sea
and Italy's border with Slovenia
, which lies
almost immediately south, east and north of the city.
Trieste is
located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste
and throughout history it has been influenced by
its location at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic
cultures. In 2009 it had a population of about 205,000 and
it is the capital of the autonomous region
Friuli-Venezia Giulia and
Trieste province.
Trieste was part of the
Habsburg
Monarchy from 1382 until 1918. In the 19th century it was the
most important port of one of the
Great
Powers of Europe.
As a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean
region Trieste became the fourth largest city of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire
(after Vienna
, Budapest
, and
Prague
). In the
fin-de-siecle period, it emerged as an
important hub for
literature and
music. However, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and Trieste's annexation to Italy after
World War I led to a decline of its economic and
cultural importance and, throughout the
Cold
War, Trieste was a peripheral city.
Today, Trieste is a border town. The population is an ethnic mix of
the neighbouring regions. The dominant local
dialect of Trieste is called
Triestine language ("Triestin" - ), a
form of
Venetian. This dialect and
the official Italian language are spoken in the city centre, while
Slovene is spoken in several of the
immediate
suburbs. The Triestin and the
Slovene languages are considered
autochthonous of the area. There are
also small numbers of
Serbian,
Croatian,
German,
Hungarian speakers.
The economy depends on the port and on trade with its neighbouring
regions. Trieste is a lively and
cosmopolitan city, with more than 7.7% of its
population being from abroad, and it is rebuilding some of its
former cultural, economic and political influence. The city is a
major centre in the
EU for
trade,
politics,
culture,
shipbuilding,
education,
transport and
commerce.
Trieste is
also Italy
and the
Mediterranean
's leading coffee port, the hometown of
"Illy Caffè" and the supplier of more
than 40% of Italy's coffee. The city is part of the "Corridor
5", which aims at ensuring a bigger transport connection
between countries in Western Europe and Eastern European nations,
such as Slovenia
, Croatia
, Hungary
, Ukraine
and Bosnia
. This
will be also a great impetus for a further boost to the economy of
Trieste. Trieste is also home to some Italian mega-companies, such
as
Assicurazioni Generali,
which was in 2005, Italy's 2nd and the world's 24th biggest company
by revenue, after
Hitachi and
Carrefour.
Geography

Satellite view of Trieste.
Trieste is
situated on the extreme limit of the Italian northeast, near the
border with the Slovenia
, in the more
northern part of high Adriatic
and lies on the Gulf of Trieste
. The urban territory is mostly built upon a
hill side that becomes a mountain: it is situated at the foot of an
imposing escarpment that from the
Kras
Plateau comes down abruptly towards the sea. The Kras heights,
close to the city, reach an altitude of 458 meters (1,502 ft)
above sea level. The territory of Trieste is composed of several
different climatic zones according to the distance from the sea
and/or elevation. The average temperatures are 6 °C (42.8 °F) in
January and 24 °C (75.2 °F) in July. The climate can be severely
affected by the
Bora, a
northern to north-eastern
katabatic
wind that can reach speeds of up to 200 kilometers per
hour
History
Ancient era
The area of what is now Trieste was settled by the
Carni, an
Indo-European tribe (hence the name
Carnia) in about the
3rd millennium BC.
Subsequently the area
was populated by the Histri
, an Illyrian people, who remained the main civilization
until the 2000 BC, when the Veneti
arrived.
After the war against the Histri the area became dominium of roman
emperor from 177 BC, Tergeste was under the rule of the
Roman republic. Trieste was granted the
status of colony under
Julius Caesar,
who recorded its name as
Tergeste in his
Commentarii
de bello Gallico (51 BC). The name Tergeste derived not from
Latin extraction, but from venetic (trg and este, compare
Opitergium, Atheste); morover Tergeste is defined "illyrian city"
from Artemidorus of Ephesus (Artemidorus Ephesius) a Greek
geographer, and "carnic" from Strabo (Greek: Στράβων; 63/64 BC –
ca. AD 24)a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.
The roman colony seems to be gather from 52 BC when during the
roman expansion to the alpine zones: in the cesar age the border
was moved from Timavo to Formione (today Risano). Roman Tergeste
has a prosper period due to the position as crossroads of Aquileia
and Istria; and as harbour, some ruins are still visible. Gaius
Julius Caesar Augustus (23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) built
the city wall 33-32 BC.
In the Early Christian era remain flourish city, and after the end
of the Western
Roman Empire (in 476),
Trieste remained a
Byzantine
military centre, but in
567 AD was destroyed by
Lombards, during their invasion of Italy.
In 788 it became part of the
Frankish
kingdom, under the authority of their
count-bishop. From 1081 the city came
loosely under the
Patriarchate
of Aquileia, developing into a free
commune by the end of the 12th
century.
Habsburg Empire
After two
centuries of war against the nearby major power, the Republic of
Venice
(which occupied it briefly from 1369 to 1372), the
burghers of Trieste petitioned Leopold III of Habsburg, Duke of Austria
to become
part of his domains. The agreement of cessation was signed in
October 1382, in St. Bartholomew's
church in the village of Šiška (apud Sisciam), today one of
the city quarters of Ljubljana
. The citizens, however, maintained a certain
degree of autonomy up until the 17th century.
Trieste became an important port and trade hub. In 1719, it was
made a
free port within the
Habsburg Empire by
Emperor Charles VI, and
remained a free port until 1 July 1891. The reign of his successor,
Maria Theresa of Austria,
marked the beginning of a flourishing era for the city.
In
1768 the German art historian
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was
murdered by a robber in Trieste, while on his way from Vienna to
Italy.
Trieste was occupied by
French
troops three times during the
Napoleonic
Wars, in 1797, 1805 and in 1809. Between 1809 and 1813, it was
annexed to the
Illyrian
Provinces, interrupting its status of free port and losing its
autonomy.
The municipal autonomy was not restored
after the return of the city to the Austrian Empire
in 1813. Following the Napoleonic Wars,
Trieste continued to prosper as the
Free Imperial City of Trieste
(
Reichsunmittelbare Stadt
Triest), a status that granted economic freedom, but limited
its political self-government. The city's role as main Austrian
trading port and shipbuilding centre was later emphasized with the
foundation of the merchant shipping line
Austrian Lloyd in 1836, whose headquarters
stood at the corner of the Piazza Grande and Sanità. By 1913
Austrian Lloyd had a fleet of 62 ships comprising a total of
236,000 tons. With the introduction of the
constitutionalism in the Austrian Empire
in 1860, the municipal autonomy of the city was restored, with
Trieste became capital of the
Adriatiches Kustenland, the
Austrian Littoral region.

A view of Trieste in 1885.
The particular
Friulian dialect,
called
Tergestino, spoken until the beginning of the 20th
century, was gradually overcome by the Triestine (the local variant
partially similar of the
Venetian
dialect) and other languages, including German grammar, and
standard Slovene and Italian languages. While Triestine was spoken
by the largest part of the population, German was the language of
the Austrian bureaucracy and Slovene was predominant in the
surrounding villages. From the last decades of the 19th century,
Slovene language speakers grew steadily, reaching 25% of the
overall population of Trieste in 1911 (30% of the Austro-Hungarian
citizens in Trieste). A small number of the population spoke
Croatian (around 1% in 1911), and
the city also counted several other smaller ethnic communities,
namely
Czechs,
Serbs and
Greeks, which mostly assimilated either to
the Italian or Slovene-speaking community.
The modern
Austro-Hungarian
Navy used Trieste's shipbuilding facilities for construction
and as a base. The construction of the first major trunk railway in
the Empire, the Vienna-Trieste
Austrian Southern Railway, was
completed in 1857, a valuable asset for trade and the supply of
coal.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a buzzing
cosmopolitan city frequented by artists and pholisophes such as
James Joyce,
Italo Svevo,
Sigmund
Freud,
Dragotin Kette,
Ivan Cankar,
Scipio
Slataper, and
Umberto Saba. The
city was the major port of the
Austrian
Riviera, an enclave, the only one very real part of
Mitteleuropa on the south of Alps. Viennese
architecture and coffeehouses still dominate the streets of Trieste
to this day.
Annexation, fall to Italy
Together
with Trento
, Trieste was
a main focus of the irredentist
movement, which aimed for the annexation to Italy of all the lands
they claimed were inhabited by an Italian speaking
population. After the end of
World
War I, the
Austro-Hungarian
Empire dissolved, and many of its border areas, including the
Austrian Littoral, were disputed
among its successor states. On November 3, 1918, Trieste was
occupied by the
Italian Army, but was
officially annexed to the
Kingdom of Italy only with the
Treaty of Rapallo in 1920.
The region was reorganized under a new administrative unit, known
as the
Julian March (Venezia
Giulia).
The fall to Italy , however, brought a loss of importance for the
city, with the new state border depriving it of its former
hinterland. The
Slovene ethnic
group (around 25% of the population according to the 1911
census) suffered persecution by rising
Italian Fascism. The period of violent
persecution of Austrian and Slovenes began on April 13, 1920, when
a group of filo-Italian Fascists burnt the
Narodni dom ("National House"), the
community hall of Trieste's Slovenes. After the emergence of the
Fascist regime in 1922, a policy of
Italianization began: public use of
Slovene language was prohibited,
all Slovene associations were dissolved, names and surnames of
Slavic and German origin were Italianized.
Several thousand
Slovenes from Trieste, especially intellectuals, emigrated to the
Kingdom of
Yugoslavia
and to South America,
where many became prominent in their field. Among the
notable Slovene emigés from Trieste were the writers
Vladimir Bartol and
Josip Ribičič, the legal theorist
Boris Furlan, and the architect
Viktor Sulčič.
In the late 1920s, Yugoslav irredentism started to appear, and the
Slovene
militant anti-fascist
organization
TIGR carried out several bomb
attacks in the city centre. In 1930 and 1941, two trials against
hundreds of Slovene activists were held in Trieste by the
Special Tribunal
for the Security of the State.
Despite the decline of the city's economic importance, the demise
of its traditional multicultural and pluri-linguistic character,
and emigration of many Slovene and big percentage of
Austrian/German speakers, the overall population continued to grow.
The Fascist Regime built several new infrastructures and public
buildings, including the almost 70 m high Victory Lighthouse
(
Faro della Vittoria), which became one of the city's
landmarks. The
University of
Trieste was also established in this period.
Several artistic and intellectual subcultures continued to swarm
under the repressive Fascist regime. In the 1920s, the city was
home to an important avant-gardist movement in visual arts, centred
around the futurist
Tullio Crali and
the constructivist
Avgust
Černigoj. In the same period, Trieste consolidated its role as
one of the centre of modern
Italian
literature, with authors such as
Umberto Saba,
Biagio
Marin,
Giani Stuparich, and
Salvatore Satta. Among the
non-Italian authors and intellectuals that remained in Trieste, the
most notable were
Julius Kugy,
Boris Pahor and
Stanko
Vuk. Intellectuals were frequently associated with
Caffè San Marco, a cafè in the city
which remains open today.
World War II and its aftermath
After the constitution of the
Italian Social Republic, on 23
September 1943, Trieste was nominally absorbed into this entity.
The
Germans, however, annexed it to the Operation Zone of the
Adriatic Littoral, which included the whole Julian March, Friuli
, the
Province of Ljubljana,
Gorski Kotar and the islands of
Krk
and Rab
. The
new administrative entity was headed by
Friedrich Rainer.
Under the Nazi occupation, the only concentration camp on Italian soil was
built in a suburb of Trieste, at the Risiera di
San Sabba
, on 4 April 1944. The city saw a strong
Italian and Yugoslav
partisan
activity, and suffered from
Allied bombings.
On April 30, 1945, the Italian anti-
Fascist
National Liberation Committee (
Comitato di Liberazione
Nazionale, or CLN) of don Marzari and Savio Fonda,
constituted of approximately 3,500 volunteers, incited a riot
against the German occupiers. On May 1,
Allied forces of the
Yugoslav Partisans'
8th Corps arrived and took
over most of the city, except for the courts and the castle of San
Giusto, where the German garrisons refused to surrender to any
force other than New Zealanders. The
2nd New Zealand Division continued
to advance towards Trieste along Route 14 around the northern coast
of the Adriatic sea and arrived in the city the next day (see
official histories
The Italian Campaign and
Through the Venetian Line). The German forces
capitulated on the evening of May 2, but were then turned over to
the Yugoslav forces.
The Yugoslavs held full control of the city until June 12, a period
known in the Italian historiography as the "forty days of Trieste"
During this period, hundreds of locals were arrested by the
Yugoslav authorities, and some of them disappeared. These included
former Fascists and Nazi collaborators, but also Italian
nationalists, and any other real or potential opponents of Yugoslav
Communism.
Some were interned in Yugoslav concentration
camps (mostly in Borovnica, Slovenia
), while others were allegedly murdered and thrown
into the potholes ("foibe
") on the
Kras plateau.
After an
agreement between the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and the British Field Marshal Harold
Alexander, the Yugoslav forces withdrew from Trieste, which
came under a joint British-U.S.
military
administration. The
Julian March was
divided between Anglo-American and Yugoslav military
administration until September 1947, when the
Paris Peace Treaty established the
Free Territory of
Trieste.
This particular political condition is still preview from U.N.O.
treaty, every Nation of U.N.O. can ask for reintegration of
"T.L.T."
Zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste (1947-54)

roght
In 1947, Trieste was declared an independent
city state under the protection of the
United Nations as the
Free Territory of Trieste. The
territory was divided into two zones, A and B, along the
Morgan Line, established in 1945.
From
1947 to
1954, the A
Zone was governed by the
Allied Military Government,
composed of the American "
Trieste United States Troops"
(TRUST), commanded by Major General Bryant E. Moore, the commanding
general of the American
88th Infantry
Division, and the "British Element Trieste Forces" (BETFOR),
commanded by Sir
Terence Airey, who
were the joint forces commander and also the military governors.
Zone A
covered almost the same area of the current Italian Province of Trieste, except for four
small villages south of Muggia
which were
given to Yugoslavia after the dissolution of the Free Territory in
1954. Zone B, which remained under the military
administration of the Yugoslav
People's Army, was composed of the north-westernmost portion of
the Istrian
peninsula, roughly between the coastal towns of
Ankaran
and Novigrad.
In 1954, the Free Territory of Trieste was dissolved. The vast
majority of Zone A, including the city of Trieste, was ceded to
Italy.
Zone B became part of Yugoslavia, along with
four villages from the Zone A - (Plavje
, Spodnje
Škofije
, Hrvatini
, and Jelarji
), and was divided among the Socialist Republic of
Slovenia and Croatia. The annexation
of Trieste to Italy was officially announced on 26 October
1954.
The
final border line with
Yugoslavia, and the status of the ethnic
minorities in the areas, was settled in
1975
with the
Treaty of Osimo.
This line
is now the border between Italy
and Slovenia
.
Economy
During
the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Trieste became a leading European city in economy, trade and commerce, and was the fourth largest and most
important centre in the Empire, after Vienna
, Budapest
and Prague
. The
economy of Trieste, however, fell into huge decline after the
city's annexation to Italy after
World War
I and was a mainly peripheral city during the
Cold War. However, since the 1970s, Trieste has had
a huge economic boom, thanks to a significant commercial shipping
business to the container terminal, steel works and an oil
terminal.
Trieste is also Italy
, Mediterranean
's and one of Europe's
greatest coffee ports, as the city supplies more than 40% of
Italy's coffee. Coffee brands, such as
Illy, were founded and are headquartered in the
city. Currently, Trieste is one of Europe's most important ports
and centres for
trade and
transport, with Trieste being part of the
"
Corrdior 5" plan, to create a bigger transport connection
between Western and Eastern European countries. Also, nowadays, the
Italian worldwide insurance company
Assicurazioni Generali, is
headquartered in the city, being in 2005 Italy's second biggest
corporation after
Eni, and the world's 24th
greatest conglomerate for revenue, and 47th according to the
Fortune Global 500 in 2009.
Demographics
| ISTAT 2007 [8903] |
|
Trieste,FVG |
Italy |
| Median age |
46 years |
42 years |
| Under 18 years old |
13.8% |
18.1% |
| Over 65 years old |
27.9% |
20.1% |
| Foreign Population |
6.2% |
5.8% |
| Births/1,000 people |
7.63 b |
9.45 b |
As of April 2009, there were 205,507 people residing in Trieste,
located in the
province of
Trieste,
Friuli-Venezia
Giulia, of whom 46.7% were male and 53.3% were female. Trieste
had lost roughly 1/3 of its population since the 1970s, due to the
crisis of the historical industrial sectors of steel and
shipbuilding, a dramatic drop in fertility rates and fast
population aging. Minors (children aged 18 and younger) totalled
13.78 percent of the population compared to pensioners who number
27.9 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06
percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of
Trieste residents is 46 compared to the Italian average of 42.
In the
five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Trieste
declined by 3.5 percent, while Italy
as a whole
grew by 3.85 percent. However, in the last two years the
city shown signs of stabilizing thanks to growing immigration
fluxes. The crude birth rate in Trieste is only 7.63 per 1,000 one
of the lowest in eastern Italy, while the Italian average is 9.45
births.
At the end of 2009,
ISTAT estimated that there
were 15,795 foreign born residents in Trieste, representing 7.7% of
the total city population.
The largest autochthonous minority are
Slovenes, but there is also a large
immigrant group from other Balkan nations
(particularly nearby Croatia
, Albania
and Romania
): 4.95%, Asia: 0.52%, and
sub-saharan Africa: 0.2%.
Serbian community consists of both
autochthonous and immigrant groups. Trieste is predominantly
Roman Catholic, but also has large
numbers of
Orthodox Christians
due to the city's large migrant population from Eastern Europe and
its Balkan influence.
The city's most spoken language is Italian though there are many
Slovene,
Venetian and
Friulian language speakers. There are also
groups of
German and
Hungarian speakers.
Main sights

Trieste seafront.

Piazza Unità d'Italia.

Piazza Unità d'Italia by night
Castles

Trieste City Hall.

The old city stock exchange.
Miramare Castle
The Miramare Castle was built between 1856 and 1860 from a project
by
Carl Junker working under
Archduke Maximilian. The Castle
gardens provide a setting of beauty with a variety of trees, chosen
by and planted on the orders of Maximilian, that today make a
remarkable collection. Features of particular attraction in the
gardens include two ponds, one noted for its swans and the other
for lotus flowers, the Castle annexe ("Castelletto"), a bronze
statue of Maximilian, and a small chapel where is kept a cross made
from the remains of the "Novara", the flagship on which Maximilian,
brother of Emperor
Franz
Josef, set sail to become
Emperor of Mexico. During the
existence of the Free Territory of Trieste, the castle served as
headquarters for the
United States
Army's
TRUST
force.
Castle of San Giusto
Designed on the remains of previous castles on the site, it took
almost two centuries to build. The stages of the development of the
Castle's defensive structures are marked by the central part built
under
Frederick
III (1470-1), the round Venetian bastion (1508-9), the
Hoyos-Lalio bastion and the Pomis, or "Bastione fiorito" dated
1630.
Churches
- The
St.
Justus Cathedral
.
- The Serb-Orthodox Temple of Holy Trinity and St. Spyridon
(1869). The building adopts the Greek-Cross plan with five cupolas
in the Byzantine tradition.
- The Basilica of St. Silvester (11th century)
- The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore (1682)
- The Church of San Nicolò dei Greci (1787). This church by the
architect Matteo Pertsch (1818), with
bell-towers on both sides of the facade, follows the Austrian late
baroque style.
- The
Synagogue of
Trieste
(1912)
Archaeological remains
- Arch of Riccardo (33 BC). It is a Roman gate built in
the Roman walls in 33. It stands in Piazzetta Barbacan, in the
narrow streets of the old town. It's called Arco di Riccardo
("Richard's Arch") because is believed to have been crossed by King
Richard of England on the way back
from the Crusades.
- Basilica Forense (2nd century)
- Palaeochristian basilica
- Roman Age Temples" : one dedicated to Athena, one to
Zeus, both on the S.Giusto hill.
The temple dedicated to Zeus ruins is next to the Forum , the
Athenas is under the basilica, visitors can see his basement
.
Roman theatre
Trieste or Tergeste, which probably dates back to the protohistoric
period, was enclosed by walls built in 33–32 BC on Emperor
Octavian’s orders. The city developed greatly during the 1st and
2nd centuries.
The Roman theatre lies at the foot of the San Giusto hill, facing
the sea. The construction partially exploits the gentle slope of
the hill, and much of the theatre is made of stone. The topmost
portion of the
amphitheatre steps and
the stage were supposedly made of wood.
The statues that adorned the theatre, brought back to light in the
1930s, are now preserved at the Town Museum. Three inscriptions
from the
Trajan period mention a certain Q.
Petronius Modestus, someone closely connected to the development of
the theatre, which was erected during the second half of the 1st
century.
Caves
In the whole Trieste province, there are 10 speleological groups
out of 24 in the whole
Friuli-Venezia Giulia region).
The Trieste plateau (Altopiano Triestino), called Kras or the
Carso and covering an area of about
200 km² within Italy has approximately 1500 caves of various
sizes.
Among the most famous are the Grotta
Gigante
, the largest tourist cave in the world, with a
single cavity large enough to contain St Peter's in Rome, and the
Cave of Trebiciano (350
m deep) at the bottom of which flows the Timavo River. This river dives
underground at Škocjan Caves in Slovenia (they are on UNESCO list)
and flows about 30 km before emerging about 1 km from the
sea in a series of springs near Duino, reputed by the Romans to be
an entrance to Hades.
Others
- The
Risiera di
San Sabba
(Risiera di San Sabba Museum)', a national
monument. It is a testimonial of the only Nazi extermination camp in Italy.
- The Foibe (Fojbe), also sort of
national monuments (foiba of "Basovizza" is a national monument).
Those are a testimonial of the killings of Italians by Yugoslav
partizans after World War II. Yugoslav army took revenge on
Italians, often regardless of their personal responsibility,
because of the Fascist violence, which lasted from 1920 until 1945,
on the Slovene minority of the Trieste region.
- Civico Museo di Storia Naturale di
Trieste
(natural history museum) containing fossils of
early man.
- Civico Orto Botanico di
Trieste
, a municipal botanical
garden
- Orto
Botanico dell'Università di Trieste, the University of Trieste's botanical garden
- Val Rosandra
, a national park on the border between the province
of Trieste and Slovenia
.
- Caffè San Marco, historical
cafè in the centre of the city
Culture
Education
The
University of Trieste is a
medium-size state supported institution that consists of 12
faculties, boasts a wide and almost complete range of university
courses and currently has about 23,000 students enrolled and 1,000
professors. It was founded in 1924.
Literature
Many famous authors lived and created their major works in Trieste.
They include:
Italian language authors
- Enzo Bettiza,
writer and journalist, born in Split

- Mauro Covacich, writer and
journalist
- Carlo Luigi Cergoly Serini (Zriny)
(Trieste, 1908 – Trieste, 4 maggio 1987), journalist and
writer
- Virgilio Giotti, poet
- Claudio Magris, writer and
essayist
- Biagio Marin,
poet (born in Grado
)
- Pino Roveredo, writer
- Umberto Saba, poet
- Scipio Slataper, essayist
- Giani Stuparich, writer and
essayist
- Italo Svevo, novelist
- Susanna Tamaro, novelist
- Fulvio Tomizza, writer, born in
Istria (now in Croatia)
- Giorgio Voghera, writer
Slovene language authors
- Igo Gruden, poet
(born in Aurisina
near Trieste)
- Vladimir Bartol, writer
- Dušan Jelinčič,
writer, essayist, and mountain climber
- Miroslav Košuta, poet
- Marko Kravos, poet
- Jovan Vesel Koseski, poet
(born in Carniola, lived in Trieste)
- Erna Muser, poet and translator
- Boris Pahor, novelist
- Josip
Ribičič (born in Baška
, lived in
Trieste between 1911 and 1925)
- Alojz Rebula, writer and
essayist
- Julius Kugy,
writer and essayist (born in Gorizia
)
German language authors
Authors of other languages
Sports
Trieste is notable for having had two clubs participating in the
championships of two different nations at the same time during the
period of the
Free Territory
of Trieste.
Triestina
played in the Italian
Serie A. Although it
faced relegation after the
first
season after the Second World War, the
FIGC
changed the rules to keep it in, as it was seen as important to
keep a club of the city in the Italian league, while [Yugoslavia]
had its eye on the city. In the championship of
next season the club played its best seaon
with a 3rd place finish.
Meanwhile, Yugoslavia bought
A.S.D. Ponziana, a small team in
Trieste, which under a new name,
Amatori Ponziana Trst,
played in the
Yugoslavian
league for 3 years. Triestina went bancrupt in the 1990s, but
after being re-founded regained a position in the Italian second
division
Serie B in 2008. Ponziana was
renamed as "
Circolo
Sportivo Ponziana 1912" and currently plays in Friuli-Venezia
Giulia Group of
Promozione, who is 7th
level of Italian league.
Transport

The
Porto Vecchio, also
showing Trieste Centrale railway station

Trieste Centrale railway station

A car of the Opicina Tramway
Maritime transport
Trieste's
maritime location and its former long term status as part of the
Austrian
and Austro-Hungarian empires made its
dock the major commercial port for
much of the landlocked areas of central Europe. In the 19th
century, a new port district known as the
Porto Nuovo was
built northeast to the city centre.
In modern
times Trieste's importance as a port has declined, both due to the
annexation to Italy, for Italy's wider choice of better located
ports, and the competition with the nearby new port of Koper
in Slovenia
. However, there is significant commercial
shipping to the container terminal, steel works and oil terminal,
all located to the south of the city centre. After many years of
stagnation, a change in the leadership placed the port on a steady
growth path, recording a 40% increase in shipping traffic as of
2007.
Rail transport
Railways came early to Trieste, due to its
port and the need to transport people and goods inland. The first
railroad line to reach Trieste was the "Sudbahn" in 1857.
This
railroad stretched for 1400 km to Lviv
, Ukraine
, via Ljubljana
, Slovenia
; Sopron
,Hungary
; Vienna
, Austria
; and Kraków
, Poland
, crossing
the backbone of the Alps mountains through the
Semmering
Pass
near Graz
.
This
railroad approaches Trieste through the village of Villa Opicina
, a few kilometres from the big city but over 300
metres higher in elevation. Due to this, the line takes a 32
kilometer detour to the north, gradually descending before
terminating at the Trieste Centrale railway station.
A second
trans-Alpine railway was dedicated in 1906, with the opening of the
Transalpina Railway from Vienna,
Austria
via Jesenice and Nova Gorica
. This railway also approached Trieste via
Villa Opicina, but it took a rather shorter loop southwards towards
Trieste's other main railway station, the Trieste Campo Marzio
railroad station, south of the central station. This line no longer
operates, and the Campo Marzio station is now a railway
museum.
To facilitate freight traffic between the two stations and the
nearby dock areas, a temporary railway line known as the
Rivabahn was built along the waterfront in 1887. This
railway survived until 1981, when it was replaced by the
Galleria di Circonvallazione, a 5.7 kilometer railway
tunnel route, to the east of the city.
Freight services from
the dock area now include container services to northern Italy and
to Budapest,
Hungary
, together with truck piggyback services to Salzburg,
Austria
and Frankfurt, Germany
.
Passenger
rail service to Trieste now mostly consists of trains to and from
Venice,
Italy
, connecting there with trains to Rome
and
Milan
at Mestre
.
These
trains reach the Trieste central station via bypassing the Gulf of
Trieste
, connecting with the Sudbahn's northern
loop. International trains between Italy and Slovenia now
pass through Villa Opicina, bypassing Trieste.
Air transport
Trieste
is served by Friuli Venezia Giulia Airport
, located at Ronchi near Monfalcone
at the head of the Gulf of Trieste.
Local transport
Local public transport in Trieste is operated by
Trieste Trasporti, which operates a
network of around 60
bus routes and two
boat services. They also operate the
Opicina Tramway, a unique hybrid
tramway and
funicular
railway that provides a more direct link between the city
centre and Villa Opicina.
Other notable people
Architects, designers, and visual artists
- Emilio Ambrosini,
architect
- Franca Batich, Italian
painter
- Tullio Crali, Futurist painter
- Avgust Černigoj, Slovene
painter
- Franko Luin, Swedish-Slovene graphic
designer
- Michael Manfredi, architect partner of Marion Weiss in
New York-based Weiss/Manfredi
- Boris Podrecca, architect
- Ivan Rendić, Croatian
sculptor
- Viktor Sulčič, Argentine Slovene architect (born in the
suburb of Santa Croce/Križ)
- Jožef Tominc, Biedermeier painter
Actors, musicians and performance artists
- Piero Cappuccilli, Italian
operatic baritone
- Antonio Bibalo, Italian pianist
and composer
- George Dolenz, actor and father of
Micky Dolenz of the Monkees
- Tullio Kezich, actor, playwright,
and screenplayer
- Alessandro Lotta, former
bassist of the bands Rhapsody of
Fire and Wingdom
- Lelio Luttazzi, musician and
showman
- Mauro Maur, Italian trumpet player
and composer
- Denis Novato, Slovene musician
- Lorenzo Pilat,
singer-songwriter
- Alberto Randegger,
composer
- Enrico Rava, jazz trumpeter
- Teddy Reno, singer
- Victor de Sabata,
conductor
- Alex Staropoli, keyboardist of
the band Rhapsody of Fire
- Elisa Toffoli, Nationally renowned
singer/songwriter, pianist, and guitarist
- Luca Turilli, guitarist
of the band Rhapsody of Fire
Entrapreneurs
Journalists and authors
- Sergio Amidei, screenwriter
- Silvio Benco, journalist, columnist
and literary critic
- Giovanna Botteri,
journalist
- Almerigo Grilz, journalist,
freelance war reporter and politician. Was killed during an African
reportage
- Miran
Hrovatin, war reporter, killed during a reportage in Somalia

- Leo Negrelli, journalist
- Demetrio Volcic, journalist and
politician
Politicians and public servants
- Engelbert Besednjak, Slovene
politician
- Josip Ferfolja, Slovenian
social-democratic politician and human rights activist
- Aurelia Gruber Benco,
politician
- Mitja Ribičič, Slovene
Communist leader, President of the Yugoslav Government
(1969-1971)
- Riccardo Illy, Italian
politician
- Fulvio Suvich, Italian
diplomat
- Vittorio Vidali (aka Enea
Sormenti, Jacobo Hurwitz Zender, Carlos Contreras), Communist
agent
- Joža Vilfan, Yugoslav
diplomat
- Josip Wilfan, Slovene jurist,
politician, and human rights activist
- Boris Ziherl, Slovene Communist
leader and Marxist philosopher
Religious figures
Scholars, scientists and intellectuals
- Luisa Accati, historian and
femminist theoretician
- Elio Apih, historian
- Václav
Bělohradský, Czech
philosopher
- Florian Biesik, Silesian linguist, Vilamovian language scholar and poet
- Ludwig Boltzmann, Austrian
physicist
- Lavo Čermelj, Slovene
physisicist and public intellectual
- Fabio Cusin, historian and public
intellectual
- Boris Furlan, Slovenian legal
theorist, translator and politician
- Boris M. Gombač, Slovenian historian
- Margherita Hack, Italian
astronomer
- Attilio Hortis, Italian literary
historian
- Jurij Japelj, Slovene
philologist
- Pietro Kandler, historian and
archeologist
- Fiorella Kostoris,
economist
- Doro Levi, archaeologist
- Pavel Merku, Slovene
ethno-musicologist and linguist
- Salvatore Pincherle, Italian
mathematician
- Jože Pirjevec, Slovene
historian
- Abdus Salam, Pakistani theoretical
physicist
- Carlo Schiffrer, historian
- Denis Sciama, British
physicist
- Igor Škamperle, sociologist,
novelist and mountaineer
- Attilio Tamaro, historian
- Marta Verginella, Slovene
historian
- Ivan Vidav, Slovene
mathematician
- Sergij Vilfan, Slovenian legal and
economic historian
Sportsmen
- Biaggio Chianese, Italian
boxer
- Emilio Comici , climber , an early
pioneer of the sport.
- Claudia Coslovich,
athlete
- Matteo Gladig, Italian chess
master
- Duilio Loi, boxer
- Cesare Maldini, former AC Milan captain, Italian football team
manager.
- Giovanni Martinolich,
Italian chess master
- Giorgio Oberweger,
athlete
- Nereo Rocco, football legend
- Tanja Romano, world champion
artistic roller skater
Others
- Maximilian of Habsburg,
Emperor of Mexico, Archduke of Austria (Schönbrunn 1832 - Querétaro
1867) built the white castle and park on the riviera. He planted
plants in the park from his travels around the world.
- Lidia
Bastianich, Italian-American chef and TV cooking show host
whose family lived in a Triestian refugee camp after their escape
from Istria

- Mathilde Bonaparte, Napoleon's niece, daughter of his brother Jerome Bonaparte, was born here in
1820
- Demetrio Carciotti,
(Dimitrios Karitsiotis), Greek merchant and important patron of
Greece
- Leo Castelli, New York art dealer
who established one of the world's leading vanguard galleries in
the 20th century
- Louis Antoine
Debrauz de Saldapenna, Austrian diplomat, journalist and
author
- Gottfried von Banfield
(1890-1986), top Austrian Empire fighter ace in World War I
- Anton Füster, Austrian
revolutionary activist, author and pedagogue
- Edvard Rusjan, Slovene aircraft
constructor and pilot
- Pinko Tomažič, Slovenian
resistance fighter and national hero
- Tone Tomšič, partisan
hero
- Jules Verne, French author, lived in
Trieste and wrote the novela " La Congiura di Trieste".
- Sigismund Zois, Slovene mecenate
and natural scientist
International relations
Twin towns — Sister cities
Trieste is
twinned with:
See also
References
Further reading
External links