by John Bryant

Created on: July 10, 2008   Last Updated: July 12, 2008

Italy is justifiably popular with tourists from around the world, of course, and everyone knows the usual destinations, too - Rome, Milan, Venice, Naples, Cinque Terre, and the northern lakes region. Wonderful places all but I discovered another, less well known Italian city in which tourists can experience a radically different vacation. Trieste, in the extreme northeast of Italy, was for centuries part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, at the northern end of the turbulent Balkans, was influenced by the forces which kept this area in bloody foment. There is also an important historical link between Trieste and the American Southwest, too!

Trieste was founded by the Romans in the 2d Century BC and its basilica, forum, and temple were built in the next two centuries as the city established itself as an important shipping and commercial center. Historians write the city fell into lethargy' after the fall of the Roman Empire and its eventual falling under the control of Venice - a lethargy lasting from the 4th to the 13th Century. Trieste freed itself from Venetian domination in 1236, however, and soon accepted protection from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As the Empire's only seaport, the city prospered greatly, also benefitting from the contributions of merchants of many religions who came to Trieste to enjoy the religious tolerance enforced by Empress Maria Theresa in the mid18th Century. Trieste was returned to victorious Italy following the collapse of the Empire at the end of WWI, though.

But the city's history' doesn't end there. When Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943, the Germans occupied the area and treated their previous allies very harshly, including creating a concentration camp in Trieste in an old rice-husking plant. With the collapse of the German occupiers at the end of the war, Yugoslav partisans seized the city in the hope of making it part of Yugoslavia and Tito's troops killed many anticommunists before an Anglo-American force arrived to establish an interim government. The city was administered by the UN from 1947 to 1954. The territorial dispute continued, occasionally threatening conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia until it was resolved through a treaty in 1975. Today, Trieste is Italian but it lies at the southern end of a very narrow corridor of land which leads back to the rest of Italy.

We were fortunate to visit Trieste on a warm, sunny weekend in May. The city was a hotbed of activity that weekend as it hosted a reunion of active

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>