San Giusto Cathedral is Trieste's cathedral, on top of San Giusto Hill, which towers over the old town and the port. Outside it is plain, almost stern; inside it holds Byzantine-school mosaics on a gold ground that alone are worth the...
Piazza Unità d'Italia is Trieste's main square, at the foot of San Giusto Hill: a huge rectangle of over 12,000 square metres, closed on three sides by monumental buildings and open on the fourth straight onto the waters of the gulf.
At...
Miramare Castle is the residence Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg had built on the cliff above the Gulf of Trieste, on the Grignano promontory, about 6 km from the station. Inside it still has its original 19th-century furnishings; outside, a...
San Giusto Castle is the fortress on top of San Giusto Hill, next to the cathedral, above the old town. Today it is a civic museum, but for many the reason to climb up is the walk along the walls, with the whole city and the gulf at your...
The Museo di Storia ed Arte e Orto Lapidario is Trieste's civic archaeological museum, on San Giusto Hill, next to the cathedral. It tells the story of the area from prehistory to Roman times, with a few surprises that came from very far...
Trieste's Roman Theatre is a stone auditorium from almost two thousand years ago, set into the slope of San Giusto Hill right in the centre, between Via Donota and Via del Teatro Romano. Restored and partly rebuilt, it lies behind the Town Hall...
The Teatro Verdi is Trieste's opera house, a short walk from Piazza Unità, with its main façade on Piazza Verdi. Opened in 1801, it has always been the city's home of opera, and Verdi premiered two of his works here.
It was built as a...
The Museo Revoltella is Trieste's gallery of modern art, on Piazza Venezia: the palazzo of a 19th-century baron with its furnishings intact, plus two buildings next door full of Italian painting and sculpture from the 19th century to the later...
Trieste's Acquario Marino is a small historic aquarium on the Rive, the city's waterfront, opened in 1933 in a wing of the old Central Fish Market. You don't come here for the great oceans, but to see up close the fish and creatures of the...
The Opicina Tramway is the historic tram that climbs from the centre of Trieste up to Villa Opicina, on the Karst plateau, 329 metres above sea level. It is public transport, line 2, but its panoramic route above the gulf also makes it a little...
The Risiera di San Sabba is the former rice-husking plant that the Nazis turned into a camp in 1943, on the outskirts of Trieste. It was the only camp in Italy with a crematorium; today it is a national monument and civic museum, a place of...
The Serbian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and Saint Spyridon is the church of Trieste's Serbian community, in the Borgo Teresiano, next to the Canal Grande. Blue domes, mosaics and statues on the façade: a corner of Byzantium by the...
The Synagogue of Trieste is the city's great Jewish temple, opened in 1912 on Piazza Giotti, in the Barriera Nuova district. It is among the largest in Europe, second in size only to the one in Budapest: a sign of how much the Jewish community...
The Victory Lighthouse is the great lighthouse that towers over the Gulf of Trieste from the Gretta hill. It is both a real lighthouse, guiding ships at night, and a memorial to the sailors who died in the First World War.
Almost 68 metres...
The Arco di Riccardo is a Roman arch from almost two thousand years ago in Trieste's old town, on Via del Trionfo, partly built into a house. It may have been one of the gates of Roman Tergeste, or perhaps the entrance to the sanctuary of the...
The Museo Teatrale Carlo Schmidl tells two centuries of theatre and music in Trieste. It is housed in the Borgo Teresiano, on the Canal Grande, in Palazzo Gopcevich, a 19th-century palazzo with inlaid floors and decorated ceilings.
The...
The Early Christian Basilica on Via Madonna del Mare, in Trieste's Old Town, is one of the oldest sites of the city's first Christian community. It came to light by chance in 1963, during roadworks, and preserves a large mosaic floor.
The...
The Museo Sartorio is a stately late 18th-century villa in the centre of Trieste, still furnished as it was when the family's last heir lived there. Period furniture, ceramics, paintings and a 14th-century masterpiece tell the life of Trieste's...
Trieste's Museum of Oriental Art brings Asia into an 18th-century townhouse on the edge of the Old Town, a few steps from Piazza Unità d'Italia. Gandhara sculptures, Chinese porcelain, Japanese armour and prints over four floors.
The visit...
Piazza della Borsa is Trieste's "second drawing room", next to Piazza Unità d'Italia: a pedestrian square that narrows towards Corso Italia. Throughout the 19th century it was the city's business heart, and its palazzi still tell the...
The Sanctuary of Monte Grisa, the National Temple to Mary Mother and Queen, is the great concrete triangle that looms over Trieste from the north, at 330 metres above sea level. From up there a spectacular view opens over the city and the...
Trieste's Natural History Museum holds more than two million specimens of botany, zoology, geology and palaeontology. It is home to an almost complete Triestine dinosaur and a great white shark over five metres long: a visit that wins over...
The Church of San Silvestro, today the Basilica of Christ the Saviour, is the oldest surviving religious building in Trieste after the early Christian basilica. It stands on Via del Collegio, at the foot of the San Giusto hill: a plain Romanesque...
The Town Hall fills the whole far side of Piazza Unità d'Italia in Trieste, facing the sea: a long eclectic façade of arches, mullioned windows with two and three lights, and the clock tower in the middle. It is the seat of the city council and...
Kleine Berlin, "little Berlin", is the largest complex of Second World War air-raid tunnels left in Trieste. You go down beneath the Scorcola hill, right in the centre, to discover the shelters for civilians and the ones dug by the Germans for...
The Carlo and Vera Wagner Jewish Museum tells four centuries of life of Trieste's Jewish community, on Via del Monte, a short walk from the centre. Ritual silver, textiles, books and documents, in a building that was itself a piece of...
The Miramare Castle Park is the garden that Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg created around his castle, on the Grignano promontory, a few kilometres north of Trieste: 22 hectares of exotic trees, avenues and ponds high above the gulf.
When...
The Canal Grande brings seawater right into Trieste, in the heart of the Borgo Teresiano, halfway between the station and Piazza Unità d'Italia. Moored boats, 19th-century palazzi, a neoclassical church at the end and the blue domes of San...
Trieste's Joyce Museum is the centre for documentation and study of James Joyce's Trieste years, the Irish author of "Ulysses". Founded in 2004 through a collaboration between the city, with its Attilio Hortis Civic Library, and the University of...
The Museo Sveviano is the centre for documentation and study of Italo Svevo, the Triestine author of "Zeno's Conscience". Since 2023 it has been housed in LETS - Museo della Letteratura, on Piazza Attilio Hortis, in the centre of...
The church of Sant'Antonio Taumaturgo, known to the people of Trieste as Sant'Antonio Nuovo, closes off the far end of the Grand Canal in the Borgo Teresiano: a great neoclassical temple that looks as if it stepped out of ancient Rome, and the...
The Felice Ippolito National Antarctic Museum brings the white continent to Trieste: its home, on the university campus in the San Giovanni park, gathers rocks, marine finds and the stories of the polar explorers.
The exhibition has three...
Palazzo Carciotti is the grand neoclassical palace at the mouth of Trieste's Grand Canal, on the waterfront: with its columns, statues and dome it is one of the most recognizable outlines along the seafront.
On the façade, six fluted Ionic...
The Parco della Rimembranza is the green slope of San Giusto Hill in Trieste: a lawn climbing between the castle and Via Capitolina, dotted with Karst stones engraved with the names of the fallen of every war.
The park was laid out between...
The Palazzo del Tergesteo is the large neoclassical block between Piazza della Borsa and Piazza Verdi, in the center of Trieste: inside it hides a cross-shaped covered arcade lined with shops, once the beating heart of the city's...
The Postal and Telegraph Museum of Central Europe occupies the ground floor of the Post Office Palace, on Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Trieste: it tells how letters and telegrams traveled when the city was the great port of the Habsburg...
Trieste's Botanical Garden is a scientific garden of about one hectare on the side of Chiadino Hill, on Via Marchesetti: a quiet green corner where some 1,200 plants grow, above all the flora of the Karst and Venezia Giulia.
The route...
Set where in the 1900s was the terminus for the railway from Trieste to Austria and the line to Pula. It contains documents, models, photographs, carriages, pieces of machinery and various locomotives that used to run on the Italian, Austrian,...
The Lanterna is Trieste's old lighthouse, at the end of the Molo Fratelli Bandiera, at the entrance to the Porto Vecchio: a stone column rising from a crenellated tower, half lighthouse and half fortress.
The 33.5-meter lighthouse was...
The San Giusto Castle Museum occupies the fortress on top of Trieste's hill: weapons, furnished rooms and Roman stones within the walls, and from the ramparts a wide view over the city.
In the Casa del Capitano is the armory, with Italian...