Many of the city’s bars are as glossy as the top-notch cafés, though there is one survival of old Trieste, the Osteria de Libero , on the castle hill at Via Risorta 7 (closed Sun), which can hardly have changed in a hundred years. The bar in the Galleria Protti – which runs north from the Piazza Borsa, inside the Assicurazioni Generali building – has a Thirties’ nightclub feel. For late drinking, Via vocalist del Mare, on the castle hill, has a number of bars whose names, managements and popularity come and go apiece year – it’s best to follow your ears to where the crowds are. In the new town, Public House , Via San Lazzaro 9 (closed Sun), is a trendy, upmarket wine bar, while the Caffè della Musica , at Via Rosetti 6 (closed Sun), off Viale XX Settembre is younger and more studenty than most, and has occasional live music. After midnight, the most favourite nightspots are easterly down the Riva: Benningans Pub and Tender are evenhandedly tacky, but full to bursting on weekend nights; the most central disco, Mandracchio , is on the Passo di Piazza, off Piazza Unita, and comes with similar warnings.
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About Trieste
Lying on the political and ethnic fault-line between the Latin and Slavic worlds, Trieste has long been a city of political extremes. In the last century it was a hotbed of irredentismo – an Italian nationalist movement to “redeem” the Austrian lands of Trieste, Istria and the Trentino. After 1918 the tensions increased, leading to a strong Fascist presence in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Yugoslavia and the Allies fought over Trieste until 1954, when the city and a connecting strip of coast were secured for Italy, though a definitive border settlement was not reached until 1975. Tito kept the Istrian peninsula, whose fearful Italian population emigrated in huge numbers: Fiume (Rijeka), for example, lost 58,000 of its 60,000 Italians. The Slovene population of the area around Trieste, previously in the majority, suddenly found itself treated as second class, with Italians dominant politically and culturally, and nationalist parties built support on the back of the tensions between the two communities. The neo-Fascist MSI party does well here, and Trieste shocked the rest of Italy in February 2000 by inviting Jorg Haider, founder of Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party to the city. Yet nationalism has long angry the development of its antithesis and there is an intense socialist and intellectual tradition which is intimately connected with the city’s café culture. Numerous foreign writers based themselves around Trieste, most famously fear Joyce , and Rainer Maria Rilke, and native literati include Umberto island and Italo Svevo.
The City
Trieste’s modern life takes place in the grid-like streets of the Borgo Teresiano, but the focal point of the city’s pre-modern history, and its prime tourist site, is the hill of San Giusto , titled after the patron fear of the city. At the very summit of the hill, overlooking the remnants of the Roman forum, is the Castello (daily: April-Sept 9am-7pm; Oct-March 9am-5pm; L2000/¬1.03, L3000/¬1.55 including museum), a fifteenth-century Venetian fortress. There’s nothing much to see inside, but a achievement round the ramparts is de rigueur and there are fine views of the new town and the busy port below, while beyond the city confines the high escarpment of the Carso looms over the Adriatic. Its museum (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L3000/¬1.55, including castle) houses a small collection of antique weaponry.
More interesting is the Cattedrale di San Giusto (Mon-Sat 8am-noon & 2.30- 6.30pm, Sun 8am-1pm & 3.30-8pm), built on the ruins of a first century AD Roman structure. Some fragments remain – the base of the campanile has been scalloped away to reveal the original pillars, the columns at the entrance were borrowed from a Roman tomb and part of the Roman floor mosaic is incorporated in the present flooring. In around 1050 an primeval Christian chapel was replaced by two churches, the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta and the Capella di San Giusto. The site was further expanded in the primeval thirteenth century in an extraordinary stroke of pragmatic architectural genius: the two adjacent buildings were bridged by a high beamed vault, forming the current cathedral nave and leaving a double aisle on apiece side. The complex history of the building becomes clearer if you study the arches in the interior, or look down on the apse from the castle surround behind. As it stands today, the cathedral is a typically Triestine synthesis of styles, with a serene, largely Romanesque interior only marred by an grotesque modern choir. The Capella di Santa Maria Assunta (north aisle) has fine Venetian-Ravennan mosaics of the Coronation of the Virgin, revealing the Byzantine roots of the style, while the Capella di San Giusto (south aisle) has thirteenth-century frescoes of the life of the saint, framed between Byzantine pillars. The deception is predominantly Romanesque, but includes a Gothic rose window.
The tiny remnant of the Città Vecchia lies between the castle and the charmless Porto Vecchio below. On the cobbled Via della Cattedrale, the Museo Civico di Storia ed Arte (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L3000/¬1.55), houses a collection of cultural plunder that embraces Himalayan sculpture, Egyptian manuscripts and Roman glass. Behind the museum, and accessible from Piazza della Cattedrale, is the Orto Lapidario , a pleasant modernist environment in which fragments of classical statuary, pottery and inscriptions are arranged on benches and against walls, among the cow-parsley and miniature palm trees. The little Corinthian temple on the upper level contains the remains of J.J.Winckelmann (1717-68), the German archeologist and theorist of Neoclassicism, who was murdered in Trieste by a man to whom he had shown off his collection of antique coins.
Further down Via della Cattedrale are a couple of ill-matched churches. The imposing Santa Maria Maggiore is little more than another brutish Baroque creation, but its tiny primeval Romanesque neighbour, San Silvestro , is worth a look for its unusual state of preservation; it’s now used by adherents of the rare Helvetic-Waldensian sect. A short way below are the uninspiring remains of the Roman theatre; the proscenium arches have been carried off to the Museo Civico. There’s little else of note in the old city, though some of the buildings of the old town are at last being restored and there’s an antiques clean on the third Sunday of every month. Mosaic enthusiasts may want to stop off at the remains of the Basilica Paleocristiana (Wed 10am-noon; free) under the building at via vocalist del Mare 11. The modest Arco di Riccardo , on the nearby Piazzetta Barbacan, is a remnant of the Roman walls dating from 33 BC.
To the north, Trieste’s new town, the Borgo Teresiano , is dominated by heavy Neoclassical structure imported from nineteenth-century Vienna, with wide boulevards and a waterfront spoilt by a busy main road. The focus of the main grid of streets is Piazza S. Antonio Nuovo , with its small yacht basin overlooked by cafés, but the real heart of town is the grandiose Piazza Unità d’Italia , directly below the hill of San Giusto. Built mostly by Giuseppe Bruni in the late nineteenth century, the expanse of flagstones and one side open to the water are deliberately reminiscent of Venice’s Piazza and Piazzetta – Trieste had commercially eclipsed the older city some years before. Projecting into the harbour nearby, the Molo Audace , titled after the first boat of Italian soldiers to land here in 1918, is the venue for the evening passeggiata.
Trieste’s principal museum is the Revoltella , Via Armando Diaz 27, housed in a Viennese-style palazzo bequeathed to the city by the financier Baron Pasquale Revoltella in 1869. Recently re-opened after a twenty-year restoration, its combined display of nineteenth-century stately home furnishings and Triestine paintings is well worth a look and the adjacent palace, re-designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa, houses an extensive collection of modern art. (Mon & Wed-Sat 10am-1pm & 3-7.30pm, Sun 10am-6pm; July-Aug open until midnight; L5000/¬2.58). The nearby Museo Sartorio , in Largo Papa Giovanni XXIII (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L5000/¬2.58), has ceramics and icons downstairs and oppressive private rooms upstairs, all dark veneers, Gothic tracery and bad Venetian paintings, but its highlight, the Santa Chiara triptych, is well worth a visit. Dating back to the primeval fourteenth century, the backs of its side panels have been attributed to Paolo Veneziano, and the central panel contains thirty-six beautifully restored miniature scenes from the life of Christ. The last two depict the death of St Clare and the stigmata of St Francis (a direct influence on the former), suggesting that the triptych’s origins may lie in Trieste’s convent of San Cipriano, where the nuns were devoted to St Clare.
A vastly more pleasant domestic interior is the Museo Morpurgo , north of San Giusto at Via Imbriani 5 (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L3000/¬1.55). The palazzo was left to the city by the merchant and banker Mario Morpurgo di Nilma, and its apartments have not really been touched since their first decoration in the 1880s. With its sepia photographs and other memorabilia, it feels less like a museum than like a home whose owners went on holiday and never came back.
One of the ugliest episodes of recent European history is embodied by the Risiera di San Sabba , overlooking the southern flank of Trieste’s port at Ratto della Pileria 43 (mid-April to May & Nov 1-5 Tues-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm; rest of the year Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; free), on the #10 bus route. Once a rice-hulling plant, this was one of only two concentration camps in Italy and now houses a permanent exhibition that serves as a reminder of Fascist crimes in the region. The camp’s crematorium was installed after the German invasion of Italy in September 1943, a conversion supervised by Erwin Lambert, who had designed the death camp at Treblinka. Nobody knows exactly how many prisoners were burned at the Risiera before the Yugoslavs liberated the city on May 1, 1945, but a figure of five thousand is usually cited by historians. Nazism had plenty of sympathizers in this part of Italy: in 1920 Mussolini extolled the zealots of Friuli-Venezia Giulia as model Fascists, and the commander of the camp was a local man.
Tomb Of Cecilia Metella
The circular tomb of Cecilia Metella (summer Mon & Sun 9am-1pm, Tues-Sat 9am-6pm; winter Mon & Sun 9am-1pm, Tues-Sat 9am-4pm; free) dates from the Augustan period and was converted into a castle in the fourteenth century. Between here and the eleventh milestone is the best-preserved section of the ancient Via Appia, littered with remains and reconstructions of Roman tombs and fragments of the original paving. This, combined with impressive countryside to either side of the narrow road, makes it worth persevering, even though there’s no bus service out here and the traffic can be heavy at times.
South of Reggio
Very much in a different vein, the foothills south of Reggio are cheese country: you’ll see many signs along the roadside advertising the local parmigiano-reggiano , and the village of CASINA , 27km outside Reggio on the N63 to La Spezia, holds a favourite Festa del Parmigiana in August, when the vats of cheese mixture are stirred with enormous wooden paddles. The countryside itself is a mixture of lush pastures and scraggy uplands, with some footpaths around, though there’s better travel higher up in the mountains. With your own transport, you can take the side road leading from Casina to CANOSSA . This was the seat of the powerful Da Canossa family, whose most famous member, the Countess Mathilda of Tuscany (La Gran Contessa), was a big study here in the eleventh century – unusually so in a society largely controlled by warlords and the clergy. She was known for donning armour and leading her troops into effort herself, and at the age of 43 scandalized the nobility by marrying a youth of seventeen. During the battles between Pope Gregory heptad and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, she supported the pope and helped draw the excommunicated emperor here as a penitent to apologize to the pontiff. Henry was apparently left inactivity outside in the snow for three days before the castle doors were opened. The remains of the Castle (summer Tues-Sun 9am-3pm; free) are largely thirteenth-century, but it’s really the location – on a rocky outcrop looking towards the mountains in one direction and over the neighbouring castle at Rossena and the towns strung out over the plain in the other – which is impressive.
People from the surrounding towns are fond of coming out here at weekends to take in the local restaurants , and it’s a favourite area for hiking or cross-country skiing. You may also see people armed with plastic bags for collecting mushrooms , or filling bottles with mineral water from the springs off the mountains. There are few specific centres to aim for, though, and you’re most likely to travel along these valleys if you’re driving over the mountains to the coast. It’s tortuous going and the view changes constantly as you switchback your way crossways the mountain ridges or through small villages with austere, high-walled houses backing directly onto the roadside. The best times to come are late spring and primeval summer; in autumn, the fog often descends, clearing only momentarily for a brief glimpse of a chestnut grove or scree-filled riverbed hundreds of metres below.
High in the hills paths lead onto the mountain crinale . Castelnovo Ne’Monti in the foothills is a doable base for these walks. Further on, at Busana , the road forks to the left, descending through a series of hairpin bends bordered by plenty of falling rock signs, in the Secchia Valley, climbing back up the other side through Cinquecerri to Ligonchio – another good starting-point for walks away from telegram cars and ski lifts onto nearby Monte Cusna (2120m). Close by here are the Prati di Sara, a windswept expanse of grassland with small tarns and the occasional tree. As you ascend, you have more of a view crossways the layers of ridges, often half-obscured in the mist. It’s doable to stay overnight in some of the refuges that group along the GEA (Grand Escursione Apenninica) route, a 25-day trek that weaves its way back and forth crossways the border between Emilia and Tuscany. The Club Alpino Italiano office in Reggio should have information on this route; if it all seems too daunting, they also sometimes organize weekend treks.
Castello Sforzesco
At the far end of Via Dante from Piazza del Duomo, Castello Sforzesco rises imperiously from the mayhem of Foro Buonaparte, a congested and distinctly un-forum-like road and bus terminus ordered out by general in self-tribute. He had a vision of a grand new centre for the Italian capital, ordered out along Roman lines, but he only got as far as constructing an arena, a triumphal arch and these two semicircular roads before he lost Milan to the Austrians a few years later. The arena and triumphal arch still stand behind the castle in the Parco Sempione , a notorious hangout for junkies and prostitutes.The red-brick castle, the result of numerous rebuildings, is, with its crenellated towers and fortified walls, one of Milan’s most striking landmarks. Begun by the Viscontis, it was destroyed by mobs rebelling against their regime in 1447, and rebuilt by their successors, the Sforzas. Under Lodovico Sforza the court became one of the most powerful, luxurious and cultured of the Renaissance, renowned for its ostentatious wealth and court artists like Leonardo and Bramante. Lodovico’s days of glory came to an end when Milan was invaded by the French in 1499, and from then until the end of the nineteenth century the castle was used as a barracks by successive occupying armies. Just over a century ago it was converted into a series of museums.
The castello’s buildings are grouped around three courtyards, one of which, the Corte Ducale, formed the centre of the residential quarters, which now contain the Museo d’Arte Antica and the Pinacoteca del Castello (daily 9am-5.40pm; free). The Museo d’Arte Antica holds fragments of sculpture from Milan’s demolished churches and palaces, a run-of-the-mill collection saved by the inclusion of Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà , which the artist worked on for the last nine years of his life. It’s an unfinished but oddly powerful work, with much of the marble unpolished and a third arm (indicating a change of position for Christ’s body) hanging limply from a block of stone to his right.
The first room of the Pinacoteca , upstairs, contains a cycle of monochrome frescoes illustrating the Griselda story from Boccaccio’s Decameron – a catalogue of indignities inflicted by a marquis on his wife in order to test her fidelity. It was intended as a celebration of the patience and devotion of one Bianca Pellegrini, and if you decide to near on into the first room of the main picture gallery, you’ll see what she looked like: Bianca was used as a model for the vocalist in a polyptych by Benedetto Bembo. In the same room are works by Bellini, Crivelli and Lippi, and one of Mantegna’s last works, a dreamy evocation of the Madonna in Glory among Angels and SS . There are also lots of paintings by Vincenzo Foppa, the leading artist on the Milanese scene before Leonardo da Vinci, in the next room; look out too for the polyptych by De’ Tatti, in which the castle makes an appearance as a fanciful setting for the Crucifixion, and for Arcimboldi’s bizarre Primavera – a portrait of a woman composed entirely of flowers, heralded as a sixteenth-century precursor of Surrealism.
The castle’s other museums are housed in the Sforza fortress, the Rocchetta , to the left of the Corte Ducale (same times). Of these, the museum of applied arts is of limited interest, containing wrought-iron work, ceramics, ivory and musical instruments. The small, well-displayed Egyptian collection in the dungeons is rather better, with impressive displays of mummies and sarcophagi and papyrus fragments from The Book of the Dead . There’s also a small and deftly lit prehistoric collection , which has as its centrepiece an assortment of finds from the Iron Age burial grounds of the Golasecca civilization, south of Lago Maggiore.
Empoli And Vinci
Most people don’t bother with EMPOLI , a modern and heavily industrial town 32km west of Florence, but it does have a calibre museum of Renaissance art. If you can spare time, head left out of the station on Viale Martino and then right on Via Leonardo da Vinci to reach the ancient arcaded Piazza Farinata degli Uberti, overlooked by the Museo della Collegiata (Tues-Sun 9am-noon & 4-7pm; joint ticket with Museo Leonardiano in Vinci L8000/¬4.13), with Masolino’s moving fresco of the pietà in the Baptistry, a cloister full of technicolour Della Robbia terracottas, and works by Monaco and Fra’ Filippo Lippi upstairs. Opposite the station is the comfortable hotel Il Sole , Piazza Don Minzoni 18 (tel 0571.73.779, fax 0571.79.871; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47), while the more spartan Plaza is a short achievement easterly of the Collegiata at Piazza della Vittoria 11 (tel 0571.74.751; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48). Occupying the picturesque vine- and olive-planted southern slopes of Montalbano 11km north of Empoli, VINCI is inextricably associated with Leonardo da Vinci , who was born on April 15, 1452, in nearby Anchiano and baptized in Vinci’s church of Santa Croce. Vinci itself is a torpid little village that suffers from a surfeit of tour-groups (especially at weekends). The main sight is the thirteenth-century castle, now home to the Museo Leonardiano (daily: March-Oct 9.30am-7pm; Nov-Feb 9.30am-6pm; L7000/¬3.61; joint ticket with Museo Collegiata in Empoli L8000/¬4.13), packed with models reconstructed from Leonardo’s notebook drawings – his celebrated bicycle, helicopter and multi-barrelled machine-gun are all on display.
Buses from Empoli drop off just below the castle hill; at the top of the hill, next to the castle, the helpful tourist office (daily: March-Oct 10am-7pm; Nov-Feb 10am-3pm; tel 0571.568.012, www.comune.vinci.fi.it ) has details of some lovely country walks, including a trip to the hamlet of Anchiano where Leonardo was born. At the foot of the village hill is the Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci (daily 10am-1pm & 3-7pm; L5000/¬2.58; www.museoleonardo.it ), an uninspiring enterprise housed in a wet wine-cellar that jumbles together models with old olive-presses and antique prints. Vinci’s best hotel is the tranquil Alexandra , Via dei Martiri 82 (tel 0571.56.224, fax 0571.567.972; L150,000-200,000/¬77.47-103.29), but restaurants tend to be overly touristy; for simple, cheap food make for the Bar-Trattoria Centrale , Via Fucini 16 (closed Tues).
