Trieste Travel Guide: Italy's Edge City on the Adriatic

Trieste is Italy’s most unusual city — a Habsburg port that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, with a Central European character unlike anywhere else in Italy. The city has three overlapping identities: Italian (the language and the people), Austro-Hungarian (the grand 19th-century architecture, the coffee culture, the literature), and Slovenian (the border is 5km from the centre). James Joyce lived here for a decade and wrote much of Ulysses in Trieste’s cafes. Italo Svevo, one of the 20th century’s great novelists, was from here.

The city

Piazza Unità d’Italia — One of the largest piazzas in Italy opening onto the sea — one side faces the Gulf of Trieste rather than another building. The Palazzo del Municipio and the Palazzo del Lloyd Triestino give the square its grand Austrian character.

Castello di San Giusto — The 15th-century castle above the city, on the hill where the Roman forum stood. The Archaeological Museum and the Cathedral of San Giusto are nearby.

Miramare Castle — 8km from the centre on a headland above the sea. The 19th-century castle built for Archduke Maximilian of Austria (who became Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico and was executed in 1867) has extensive formal gardens and an extraordinary site. Accessible by bus.

Coffee

Trieste has the most intense coffee culture in Italy. The city is the headquarters of Illy; coffee is ordered differently here — a capo (equivalent to a macchiato), a nero (straight espresso), a goccia (espresso with a drop of milk). The historic cafes — Caffè degli Specchi on Piazza Unità, Caffè San Marco on Via Battisti — are among the finest in Italy.

Getting there

Trieste is 2 hours from Venice by train. Ljubljana, Slovenia, is 2 hours east.