William Cook

The capital of nowhere

The Italian city’s mongrel heritage and complex past, along with its stunning location, make it an unbeatable destination

‘Welcome to the free territory of Trieste,’ reads the sign in the shop window. ‘US and UK come back!’ For me, this is the sort of thing that makes Trieste such a beguiling place. Sixty-four years since those British and American troops departed and handed this disputed seaport back to Italy, it still feels like a no-man’s-land, stranded between the Slav and Latin worlds.

Jan Morris, the queen of travel writers, called Trieste the capital of nowhere, and I needed to read only the first few pages of her bewitching book Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere to know I’d love it here. ‘The last breath of civilisation expires on this coast where barbarism starts,’ wrote Chateaubriand, in 1806. Of course it’s considered rather rude to call people barbarians nowadays, but I know exactly what he means. Despite its elegant architecture there’s something untamed about Trieste — the limestone cliffs that tower over it, the fierce wind which lashes the promenade. It’s on the fault line between Catholic and Orthodox, a frontier between West and East.

But the main thing that makes Trieste so thrilling is that unlike Venice (two hours west of here by car or train), it’s almost entirely free of tourists. It has no must-see sights and it always used to be a nuisance to get to. Now that you can fly here with Ryanair a few sightseers are drifting in, but they’re generally independent travellers, keen to spend a few days in an unspoilt city that’s still undiscovered by big tour groups. What those coach parties and cruise ships are missing is an ornate, compact port full of lively bars and homely restaurants, in a spectacular location on a narrow strip of land between wild uplands and a restless sea. As you stroll along its grand old avenues, curiously bereft of traffic, you wonder: how did Trieste end up like this — and why can’t other cities be this way?

The Triestini are proud of their mongrel heritage — Italian, Austrian, Slovenian — and as befits a place with such a hybrid population, Trieste has a complicated past.

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