Things to Do in Trieste: Coffee, Habsburg Grandeur, and the Adriatic Edge of Europe

Trieste is one of the most singular cities in Italy — a Habsburg port city that was one of the great cosmopolitan centres of Central Europe (the third-largest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire), became Italian in 1920, and has never quite settled into Italian identity. It feels Mitteleuropean: the architecture is grand and Viennese, the coffee culture is the most serious in Italy, the literature is Central European (James Joyce wrote most of Ulysses and Dubliners here), and the landscape — limestone plateau above, Adriatic below — is completely unlike anywhere else in the country. The city is often described as melancholic; it is also very beautiful.

Piazza Unità d’Italia

The largest sea-facing piazza in Italy — one side open to the Adriatic, three sides closed by grand 19th-century buildings: the Palazzo del Comune (Town Hall), the Palazzo del Lloyd Triestino (shipping company headquarters, now government offices), and the Palazzo del Governo. Built to express Habsburg imperial ambition; very successful. The scale and the sea view together are immediately striking.

The coffee culture

Trieste has a coffee culture distinct from anywhere else in Italy — and claims, with some justification, to be the real Italian coffee capital. The Viennese coffee house tradition grafted onto Italian espresso technique produces both the strongest coffee and the most ceremony. Café San Marco (Via Cesare Battisti 18) — opened 1914, where James Joyce wrote, with its original Viennese interior — is the best café in the city and one of the finest historic cafes in Europe. Caffè degli Specchi on Piazza Unità is the central option.

In Trieste, the coffee vocabulary is different from the rest of Italy: a nero is an espresso, a capo is a macchiato, a capo in b is a macchiato in a glass. Ordering “un caffè” will get you a nero.

Miramare Castle (Castello di Miramare)

A 19th-century castle on a promontory 7km north of the city, built 1856–1860 for Archduke Maximilian of Austria (who later became Emperor of Mexico and was executed there in 1867). The castle is furnished as it was in Maximilian’s time — an exceptional Victorian-era palatial interior. The park has a good view across the Gulf of Trieste. Reached by bus no. 36 from Piazza Oberdan (20 minutes). €10 entry; gardens free.

The old city (Borgo Teresiano and surroundings)

The Borgo Teresiano is the 18th-century commercial grid built by Maria Theresa to accommodate the free port she declared in 1719. The Grand Canal runs into the centre of the grid, with the Church of Sant’Antonio Nuovo at its head — one of the characteristic Triestine images.

The hill above the modern city — the Colle di San Giusto — is the old Roman settlement. The Cathedral of San Giusto (built on a Roman temple) has 5th–13th century mosaic apses. The Venetian castle beside it holds views across the port.

James Joyce and literary Trieste

Joyce lived in Trieste from 1904 to 1920, teaching English and writing. He wrote Dubliners and most of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man here, and began Ulysses. The Joyce Museum (Museo Joyce) in the Piazza Attilio Hortis covers his Trieste period. A bronze statue stands on the Canal Grande. The city’s multilingual, cosmopolitan character directly influenced his writing.

Other Triestine writers: Italo Svevo (whose novel La Coscienza di Zeno is the masterpiece of Italian modernism) and Umberto Saba (poet, whose bookshop on Via San Nicolo still operates).

Karst plateau and the Caves of Postojna

The Carso (Karst) plateau above Trieste is the limestone terrain that gave the world the word “karst” (from Slovenian). The landscape is dramatic, with sinkholes, dry valleys, and the world’s most extensive cave systems. Grotta Gigante — the world’s largest tourist cave — is 10km from Trieste (bus from Piazza Oberdan). Caves of Postojna (50km in Slovenia) — one of Europe’s largest cave systems with an underground train through 5km of passages — is a common day trip.

Day trips

Slovenia: Trieste is 10km from the Slovenian border. Ljubljana is 2.5 hours by bus. The Julian Alps (Triglav National Park) are 1.5 hours away.

Istria (Croatia): The Istrian peninsula, 30 minutes south, has Roman ruins at Pula, the medieval hilltop towns of Rovinj and Motovun, and excellent cuisine. Day trip or overnight.