Day 40 Our Last day in Trieste
During our short visit here we have really fallen in love with this beautiful city and its inhabitants. In my final post from here, I thought I would pop in a few random things we found wandering around this wonderful place.
You occasionally come across signs like this. It turns out that for centuries Trieste has been under the control of remote powers. Austrian control of the city was lost at the end of WW1 when it was transferred to Italian control.
Shortly after this happened the Fascist regime took power in Italy and they were not popular with the locals. At the end of WW2 for a period of 6 years Trieste was ruled by an American and UK Military Commission while the politicians decided the town’s fate. The military government did not interfere in local matters and for the first time in centuries the people of Trieste were running their own affairs with no far away authority telling them what to do, and they seemed to have enjoyed the experience.
The decision to hand this area back to Italy did not sit well with the people who remembered their time under the Mussolini government, hence the signs.
Just offshore of Trieste is moored a very weird looking grey yacht with three giant masts. It belonged to a Russian Oligarch and was seized three years ago as part of the EU sanctions. It has been moored there ever since. It is said to have cost 600 Million Euros and has its own helicopter and submarine as well as a garage full of luxury cars.
I couldn’t help myself so I talked Jeanette into going down to the closed train museum to see if we could see anything interesting through the fence. Nothing much was visible just a lot of dilapidated wagons and long weeds. I got this shot of a sad looking 4 wheeled tram car.
Austria is a landlocked country and when it controlled Trieste this was Austria’s main connection to the sea. All its coffee was shipped through this port which gave rise to the coffee culture the city has today. The original train station (now redundant) sits on the waterfront and is of enormous size. It’s currently undergoing an extensive renovation.
In the centre of the square alongside our hotel there was a magnificent bronze statue of Maximilian Emperor of Mexico, it vanished in the late 19th Century but after WW2 some enterprising soul located it in a warehouse in Vienna. After some negotiation it was returned to our square and re-erected and there he stands again today.
The building across the square from us houses the Trieste Museum of Modern Art. Fortunately the collection seems to have stopped around 1925 so one is spared all the tripe that has been produced over the last hundred years and there are some magnificent works displayed.
The collection is housed in the former palace of Baron Revoltello, a financier who was the Vice President of the company that built the Suez Canal. He died without any children and left his house and art collection to the City of Trieste.
The building has six floors. The top four floors have been modernised and house the art collection which is really enjoyable, and the bottom two have been left as they were when the Baron lived there and are just amazing in their opulence.
One final Trieste observation, it makes no difference whether you are in an ex Emperor’s Place, a Baron’s residence or our hotel, the parquetry floors squeak like blazes!
Hardys’ Travels 