Trieste

“ Trieste, which is situated at the end of the gulf which bears its name, is built in the form of an amphitheatre on the side of a hill, the foot of which is washed by the sea. A citadel has been constructed on the summit of this hill, and, from its position, commands all the city, which is divided into an upper and a lower town. My brother's house was in the lower part of Trieste, near the port. The Empress Maria Theresa transformed Trieste, which before that was merely a harbour, into a commercial city, the chief, in fact the only, maritime establishment of the Austrian Empire. ”

“ The hills were covered with woodland and verdure; the deep blue Adriatic was in the foreground, dotted with lateen sails; and the town filled the valley and straggled up the slopes. The sky was softly blue on a balmy day; the bees and birds, the hum of insects, the flowers and fresh air, and the pretty, animated peasants, combined to form a picture which made one feel glad to live.
"The charm of Trieste is that one can live exactly as one pleases. Richard and I drew out a line for ourselves when we first went to Trieste, and we always kept to it as closely as we could. ”

“ It is worth a journey to Trieste to see the youngsters of the suburbs enjoy their evenings on the Capo Liddo, the sandy headland between the Pola pike-road and the harbor fortifications: four or five hundred half-wild boys, splashing in the surf, throwing stones, wrestling, or chasing each other along the shore, all shouting and cheering, merry as carnivallers, though there is not a pair of shoes or a dozen hats in the crowd. Swift-footed, lithe, and indefatigable, they are the very picture of careless health ”

“ Slowly, slowly we turn round: and as the ship turns, our hearts turn. Palermo fades from our consciousness: the Naples boat, the disembarking crowds, the rattling carriages to the land—the great City of Trieste—all fades from our heart. We see only the open gap of the harbour entrance, and the level, pale-grey void of the sea beyond. ”

“ We reached the gate of Trieste about four o'clock, and after driving through some fine wide streets wholly paved with flagstones, and across the Ponterosso, a miserable little bridge, we took up our quarters at the Locanda Grande, in the market-place; but our rooms looked towards the harbour and sea, and immediately beneath them we heard the joyous noise and bustle of the sailors. What a difference between this town and the inland cities of Germany! There all seems dead or asleep, and hardly a living soul is to be seen in the streets; here, on the contrary, all is activity and animation. ”

“ Moore—Ruins of Pola—Immense amphitheatre—Village of Pola—Coast of Dalmatia, of Apulia and Calabria—Otranto—Sails for the Isles of Greece.
Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its streets are beautifully paved and clean, its houses new and well built, and its shops as handsome and as well stocked with every variety of things as those of Paris. Its immense commerce brings all nations to its port, and it is quite the commercial centre of the continent. ”

“ Trieste is the best paved town I was ever in, and otherwise internally attractive, while in the immediate neighbourhood, on the spurs of the great mountains and along the Adriatic shore, are matchless sites for country houses, and many most fascinating houses on them. ”

“ There, up and down the squares, quays, and promenades on both sides of the harbor leading to the grand canal which runs through Trieste, there goes, comes, throngs, hastens and tears along in the fury of business a population of some seventy thousand inhabitants of Italian origin, whose mother tongue is lost in a cosmopolitan concert of all the sailors, traders, workmen, and officials, who shout and chatter in English, German, French, or Sclave. Although this new town is rich, it by no means follows that all who tread its streets are fortunate. ”

“ I left Trieste early this morning, with a guide, to visit the grotto. After a three hours' walk over two very long and steep hills, from which however the view over the Adriatic, with numberless white sails flitting across its waves, the two coasts, the harbour with its shipping, the town and the gardens surrounding it planted with cypresses and olives, was magnificent, we reached Corneale, a small and dirty village, and having here provided ourselves with a man carrying a large lamp, and some boys with candles, proceeded over some very rough and stony fields to the grotto. ”

“ I accordingly set out for Trieste, with all the impatience of a sanguine mind, anxious to change place, eager to push forward, and full of the new route I had laid down——the charms of which, particularly of seeing Grand Cairo, the Land of Egypt, and the Pyramids, were painted by my imagination in all the glowing exaggerated colours of romance. The Captain of the vessel was then at Venice, and I accompanied him to Trieste, which is about sixty miles from Venice. ”

“ Thus, unlike Treviso and Udine, Trieste has been Austrian in one sense only. Never forming a part of the Austria of Lombardy, it has had a far more abiding connexion with the Austria of Germany. The lordship which Trieste acknowledged was of course at first only an overlordship, and the Council and Commons of the city still continued to act as a separate commonwealth. But an union of this kind is one of those fatal partnerships between the stronger and the weaker which can lead only to bondage. ”

“ The castle, with its ugly modern fortifications, rises again above the church; and the duomo of Trieste, with its shapeless outline and its low, heavy, unsightly campanile, does not catch the eyes like the Greek cross and cupola of Ancona.
Again at Trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have been a rival to the arch at Ancona; and now either we have to hunt it out by an effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it does, at the head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. Of a truth it can not compete with Ancona or with Rimini, with Orange [6] or with Aosta. ”

“ Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely our new towns in America. We took a stroll through the principal streets after our visits were over, and I was surprised at the splendour of the shops, and the elegance of the costumes and equipages. It is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants.
Vienna.—The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at Trieste. One half of the officers had taken the steamboat for Venice on the second evening of our arrival, and the other half waited impatiently their turn of absence. ”

“ On the other hand, the commercial interests of Trieste are entirely bound up with its hinterland, by which is meant not only the Alpine provinces, but Upper and Lower Austria and Bohemia on the one hand and even south Germany (Bavaria) on the other. Any settlement, then, must be a compromise between national and economic interests. As an ancient centre of Italian culture, Trieste would welcome the flag of the Regno upon its municipality, as the surest guarantee that the town would remain Italian in character to all time. ”

“ When from my iron grate I looked on the vale of the winding Isonza, blooming with foliage and verdure and bounded by the blue Carinthian hills, and listened to the rushing sound of the free bold river, how intense were my longings to follow its course to where it plunged headlong into the Gulf of Trieste; where for hours I have watched the scudding sails till my eyes and heart ached. O, hours of longing and of agony! To see nature spread before me in all her glory, yet be unable to taste her sweets: to be a prisoner without a crime. ”

“ Then Rovigno and Parenzo, harbour towns on the coast. At Punto Salvore we enter our own "Gulf of Trieste," passing Pirano, which we can see from our own windows, and finally Trieste. The coming into Trieste is very sweet from the sea. The beautiful little City, nestled in its corner in the mountains at the very top of the Adriatic, seemed to us the greenest and most beautiful spot we had ever beheld, after hot India and barren Egypt and Arabia. The hills plumaged to the sea, dotted with white villages and villas; Miramar standing well out to sea in the warm haze ”

“ Trieste, which, with its suburbs, has a population of not far from 400,000, with its splendid terminal facilities, its vast harbor-works, its dry-docks and foundries, its railway communications with the hinterland, and, above all else, its position as the natural outlet for the trade of Austria, Bavaria and Czecho-Slovakia, constitutes not only Italy's most valuable prize of war, but, everything considered, probably the most important city, commercially at least, to change hands as a result of the conflict. ”

“ If you take the midnight steamer at Venice you reach Trieste by six o'clock in the morning, and the hills rise to meet you as you enter the broad bay dotted with the sail of fishing-craft. The hills are bald and bare, and you find, as you draw near, that the city lies at their feet under a veil of mist, or climbs earlier into view along their sides. ”

“ What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side of her inland sea, with her harbor full of the ships of every nation, her streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be reckoned as an example of the rule or an exception to it?
No city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern ”

“ Now back to notre premier amour, Trieste. I associate with politicians and clever men all day, with open eyes and ears; and an occasional peep at a despatch makes one learn a great deal, and form strong opinions. I am neither philo-Turk nor Russ. I am John Bull to the backbone, with personal Austrian sympathies, and a strong leaning to all that is of Arab blood. ”

“ There are few stranger places in the world than the hilly region around the head of the Gulf of Venice, and few stranger people than the Slovaks who inhabit it. Almost within sight of busy, bustling, populous Trieste, with its bristling masts, and crowded quays, and rattling carriages, and smart modern hotels, you come suddenly upon a district dotted with quaint little antique villages that seem to have been dropped by Santa Claus out of his basket of toys—villages which might well have Rip Van Winkle for chief magistrate, and the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus for tenants. ”

“ We have left Venice. We have passed an intolerable night on board the Austrian steamer, whose state-rooms are without air, its cabin without quiet, and its deck without shelter. So inconvenient a transport, in these days of steamboat luxury, makes one laugh and wonder. Trieste, our stopping-place, is the strangest mongrel, a perfect cur of a city (cur-i-o-sity) . It is neither Italian, Greek, nor German, but all three of these, and many more. The hotel servants speak German and Italian, the shop-keepers also. Paper money passes without fight or agio upon the prices demanded. ”

“ At the foot of the mountain, and partly concealed by it, appeared Trieste, with its harbour full of vessels, lying on a small promontory. Looking over the town and across the bay the eye embraces the whole hilly coast of Istria, with the towns of Capo d'Istria, Pirano, and others; and promontory is seen beyond promontory till the more distant ones can no longer be distinguished from the waves. The right or opposite coast, stretching down to Venice, is flat, and the last visible point on it is the ancient town of Aquilea ”

“ The usual quartette went to Sagrado and Gradisca—two little Italian-like towns—on Saturday, 15th June.
There is one great drawback about Duino—there are only two roads. One goes to Trieste and the other doesn't. It is rather monotonous always driving along the same road. Familiarity breeds contempt, and even poplar-trees and marshes pall on one in time. However, "what can't be cured must be endured," and if you do not want to go to Trieste you must go the other way, even if it has grown almost too familiar. ”

“ The prettiest thing in Trieste was the swimming school. It was moored out at the entrance to the harbour. We used to reach it in a boat, and get hold of Tonina, the old woman who provided us with the camerino, or little stall to undress in, and who would grin from ear to ear at our chaff and the thought of her bakshish. The women's costumes were short trousers, with bodice or belt of blue serge or white alpaca trimmed with red. We plunged into the great vasca or basin, an acre of sea, bottomless, but enclosed on all sides with a loaded net, to keep out the sharks. ”

“ At Trieste, too, the Italian type, so pure at Venice, is lost or continually modified by the mixed character of the population, which perhaps is most noticeable at the Merchants' Exchange. This is a vast edifice roofed with glass, where are the offices of the great steam navigation company, the Austrian Lloyds,—which, far more than the favor of the Imperial government, has contributed to the prosperity of Trieste,—and where the traffickers of all races meet daily to gossip over the news and the prices. Here a Greek or Dalmat talks with an eager Italian or a slow, sure Englishman ”

“ After about an hour’s delay they had cleared the line sufficiently for the train to move on, and [12] in the morning we arrived at Trieste. It is a pretty modern town, in a charming situation. The villas which are scattered over the hills, that rise behind the town, look very pretty and pleasant. “Mira Mare,” the property of Prince Maximilian of Austria, Emperor of Mexico, is a beautiful marine residence. ”