XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX The apsidal mosaic in the Cathedral of San Giusto, depicting Christ between St Justus and St Servulus. Opposite: A view from Miramare Castle The winds of change Once called ‘the capital of nowhere’, the Northeast Italian city of Trieste has switched between nations as often as any in Europe. Wander its windswept harbours and hillside streets to hear echoes from the furthest corners of the continent WORDS OLIVER SMITH @olismithtravel PHOTOGRAPHS PHILIP LEE HARVEY @philip_lee_harvey_photographer 80 November 2019 November 2019 81 ITALY’S LOST CORNER XXXXXXXXX Matteo Pizzolini in his café, Antico Caffè Torinese. Opposite left: Espresso cups at the ready. Far left: The former Trieste- TO WHOM DOES THE CITY OF TRIESTE BELONG? Opicina tram Maps show it belongs to Italy, right on the eastern edge, dangling from the rest of the country by a thin thread of territory. Ask the citizens of Rome or Milan, and you get a different answer. A 1999 poll showed 70 per cent of Italians believed Trieste does not count as Italy. Open a history book, and you can understand this confusion. In little over a century, Trieste has belonged to Austria-Hungary, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia, become a free port under UK and US administration and, now, belongs to Italy again. It is a place where residents blinked and found their passports had changed colour. In many ways Trieste belongs to writers, for whom its statelessness was inspiration. Jan Morris calls Trieste ‘the capital of nowhere’ – a city lost ‘on a fold of a map’ whose shifting identity signified all of Europe, maybe all of the world. It has teleported writers to faraway places: James Joyce wrote Dubliners as a resident; Richard Burton dreamed of the gardens of Damascus and translated Arabian Nights here. Sigmund Freud wrote about the sex lives of eels in Trieste, but I digress. Today it is a prosperous city with few major sights, but a place perfectly suited to aimless exploration along windy quays, pondering monuments to fallen empires. It is, I’d suggest, one of the most secretly beautiful cities in Italy – though, of course, some would dispute whether it is in Italy at all. rieste starts its day with a sacred ritual: a yank of a lever, a cloud of steam, a clink of porcelain, then a lightning bolt of Tespresso to sharpen sleep-fogged brains. Trieste is one of Europe’s coffee capitals, and its greatest landmarks aren’t churches or castles, but cafés. ‘There is a certain recipe for a good café,’ says Matteo Pizzolini, owner of Antico Caffè Torinese, one of the city’s most storied. ‘You need strong coffee in the mornings. Cocktails in the evenings. And it needs to be a place that makes customers feel important, all day long.’ Matteo purchased the café a few years ago when it was at a low ebb, describing it as like buying a ‘Ferrari parked in a garage’. He is now a proud custodian of its 100 year-old traditions: chandeliers twinkling over customers hunched over morning papers, Art Nouveau cabinets stuffed with obscure spirits. ‘In some ways, the café is like a stage: the regulars are the cast,’ he says. Trieste’s coffee culture is nothing new. It dates from the time when the city was Austria- Hungary’s foothold in the Mediterranean: Vienna’s corridor to the world. This international port handled goods bound for stations from Sarajevo to Prague, with merchants and sailors of all nationalities: Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, Venetians, Armenians, Greeks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs. Now-rusting cranes once creaked under the weight of Ethiopian beans. 82 November 2019 November 2019 83 XXXXXXXXXX ITALY’S LOSTXXXXXXXXX CORNER cross Italy Trieste is notorious for the bora: a powerful wind that robs the laundry lines, barges yachts in the harbour,A eats umbrellas for primi, secondi and dolce. It sometimes makes walking Trieste’s streets feel like horizontal mountaineering. The city is the bora’s first stop after dipping off the Alps, before it whips south towards the battlements of Dubrovnik. In summer the bora is Derelict warehouses once buzzed with the aroma mostly playful; in winter it can be icy and furious. of arabica. The sound of a foghorn reaches Antico The best place to watch the bora depart the city Caffè Torinese. Today, cruise liners anchor where and blow into the Adriatic is Miramare Park, just merchant ships once docked; their bows point to the northwest of town. It is also a living straight at seafront hotels, so guests in dressing testament to the bora – most of the trees in the gowns come eye to eye with captains at the bridge. park grow sideways. The park is popular with The port may be quieter, but you can still taste weekend Triestini, and WWF (World Wide Fund Trieste’s multi-ethnic past with a cup of coffee. for Nature) oversees a small marine park offshore. Clockwise: Trieste’s city Here, at Antico Caffè Torinese, you could be in ‘We’re in a special place, where the mountains hall; the interior of Miramare Castle; Rome, with the purr of the espresso machine and drop down to warm waters,’ says Davide Scridel, Monumento Leonardo the clatter of stools. In nearby Caffè Tommaseo, a WWF naturalist who took his girlfriend to the Manzi in Trieste’s Piazza you could be in Vienna, with slabs of cake, gardens on their first date. ‘You see a mix of Unità d’Italia; an linen-clad tables, tinkling pianos and milky northern and southern species: eider ducks like antique shop window. coffee. And in parts of the city home to ethnic in northern Europe; loggerhead turtles like in the Opposite: A Triestina Slovenes you can find the frothy Turkish coffee of southern Mediterranean.’ enjoys a morning the Balkans, the mysterious brew that whispers Davide takes me around the park, which also espresso with her dog of Istanbul, the Golden Horn and journeys across stands at a junction of European biospheres. The the leagues of the Adriatic. sturdy holm oaks of an English garden line the Wherever you are in Trieste, the sea is a constant higher slopes, while Aleppo pines and little palms presence: sometimes as a salty vapour, sometimes grow in the sheltered parts the bora cannot reach. as a grey smudge on the horizon. When the city Soon we reach Miramare Castle, built by switched between nations, caught in the turbulent Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. gusts of 20th-century history, some say its soul Raised in landlocked Vienna, Maximilian truly belonged out at sea. It is no coincidence that became enraptured by the sight of the sea at the wood-panelled interior of Antico Caffè Torinese Trieste. Serving in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was designed to look not like a café or a restaurant, he circumnavigated the world in his frigate but like the cabin of a steamship. Novara, from the Cape of Good Hope to Tahiti, eventually sailing to Mexico in a doomed plan to become emperor of the land of the Aztecs. Maximilian’s adventure ended in front of a firing squad near Mexico City – but his castle stands as a memorial to his seafaring dreams. We step inside and, at the centre, find another cabin: Maximilian’s dry-land replica of his quarters on the Novara. It is dotted with brass oil lamps and oriental boxes, creaking timber columns and paintings of ships. Here he could look out to sea, hear the raging of the bora, and imagine he was sailing on faraway swells. 84 November 2019 November 2019 85 ITALY’S LOST CORNER MAKE IT HAPPEN Daniel Recanati at prayer in the synagogue. Right: The altar in the Trieste Serbian Orthodox Church of Saint GETTING THERE Spyridon. Opposite: Ryanair flies direct from Trieste’s Luna Park London Stansted to Trieste Friuli Venezia Giulia Airport (from £50; ryanair.com). You can also take connecting flights from the UK to Trieste with Alitalia, Eurowings and Lufthansa. The airport is 20 miles out of town, serviced by E51 line buses (one hour; £3.80) and a new train service (30 minutes; WHERE TO STAY £3.80). A taxi to central Built in the last years of the Austro- Trieste should cost £60. Hungarian Empire, the 144-room Savoia Excelsior Palace (above) is a FURTHER INFO grand hotel of the old school, taking up TRIESTE DIRECTORY OUT OF THE SEA Lonely Planet’s Italy an entire city block on the seafront. Antico Caffè Torinese Book ahead at the popular Hostaria guide (£17.99) includes Rooms were given a sumptuous (anticocaffetorinese.ts.it) Malcanton for superb seafood dishes Trieste in its chapter refurbishment in 2009 – the best of Caffè Tommaseo such as spaghettini with clams and on Friuli Venezia Giulia, them have colonnaded balconies that (caffetommaseo.it) chicory, a garlicky fish soup or simply which you can also overlook the Adriatic. Settle into one Greek Orthodox Church grilled catch of the day (mains from £15; download as a of the crushed-velvet sofas in the bar of Saint Nicholas facebook.com/HostariaMalcantonTs). separate PDF (£2.99; for aperitivo hour (from £165; (comgrecotrieste.it) INTO THE SEA shop.lonelyplanet.com). starhotelscollezione.com). Miramare Castle One of Trieste’s most rewarding stops For more The three operatically named rooms (miramare.beniculturali.it) is the Miramare Marine Protected on Trieste at B&B Atelier Lidia Polla Trieste sport Piazza Unità d’Italia Area, Italy’s first marine reserve. WWF and the parquetry floors, antique furniture and Orthodox Church recently opened an excellent visitor surrounding some bolder touches in patterned of Saint Spyridon centre in the stables of Miramare Castle synagogue, standing in the nave.