Description

Trieste is a city in North-East Italy. Once a very influential and powerful center of politics, literature, music, art and culture under Austrian-Hungarian dominion, its importance fell into decline towards the end of the 20^th Century. Today Trieste is often forgotten as tourists head off to the big Italian cities like Rome and Milan. The first thing you notice about Trieste may be how little it looks like Italy. There’s a good reason: from 1382 until 1918 it was part of Austria. As the Austrian Empire grew smaller, Trieste became its only major sea port, and by the late 1700s had replaced Venice as the Adriatic’s principal center of trade with the Near East. Trieste has been called the ultimate nowhere-place: officially part of several successive countries and empires through the ages, yet spiritually bound to none of them.