Trieste

Why go

Joyce wrote most of Ulysses here — ten years in the city, teaching English to pay for it. A Habsburg port on the Adriatic — imperial architecture in an Italian city with Slovene villages above. Caffè culture in the Viennese sense — marble tables, newspapers and no hurry, since the eighteenth century. The Karst — a limestone plateau of caves, vineyards and the bora wind, immediately behind the town.

The character

Trieste was Austria's port — the empire's only real outlet to the sea, made a free port in 1719 and built up by Vienna into a city of merchants, insurers and shipping lines with a population that was Italian, Slovene, German, Greek, Serb and Jewish at once. That mixture produced its literature: Italo Svevo wrote here in Italian while thinking partly in the local dialect, and James Joyce arrived in 1904, stayed a decade, taught at the Berlitz school, drank too much, borrowed money from Svevo and wrote most of Ulysses.

The city became Italian in 1918 and lost its hinterland, then spent the Cold War as a dead end against the Yugoslav border. That isolation preserved it: the Habsburg centre is intact, the cafés still function as they did, and the atmosphere is melancholy in a way visitors either find oppressive or cannot get enough of. Jan Morris called it the city of nowhere. The bora, a wind that can exceed 150 kilometres an hour, blows through several times each winter and has ropes strung along some streets to hold on to.

Places of character

Caffè San Marco — 1914, with wooden masks and a bookshop inside; Svevo and Joyce both used it. Piazza Unità d'Italia — the largest sea-facing square in Europe, Habsburg on three sides and open to the Adriatic. Joyce's addresses — a marked walk between the flats he rented, and a bronze of him on the Ponterosso bridge. Risiera di San Sabba — the only Nazi camp with a crematorium on Italian soil, now a memorial. Miramare Castle — Maximilian's white castle on the sea, built for a life he left for Mexico and execution. The Karst — Opicina by tram, then the vineyards and osmize, farm rooms that open when the wine is ready.

The way to do it

Sit in cafés — this is not a filler activity here but the city's proper use. Take the Opicina tram up onto the Karst for the view back down. Eat in a buffet, the Trieste institution serving boiled pork with mustard and kren. And read Jan Morris's book, or Svevo, before coming.

One perfect day

Coffee at San Marco with a newspaper, an hour, unhurried. Walk Piazza Unità and along the Molo Audace into the sea. Joyce's flats and the Svevo museum mid-morning. Lunch in a buffet — boiled pork, sauerkraut, a glass of Terrano. Afternoon at Miramare, walking the park to the white castle on its rock. Back for the Risiera if you have the stomach; it is important and half an hour. Aperitivo on the square as the sun goes down over the water, then dinner up on the Karst at an osmiza, with the city lights below.

Grand hotels

Grand Hotel Duchi d'Aosta — on Piazza Unità, the city's traditional address since the nineteenth century. Savoia Excelsior Palace — 1911 on the waterfront, built when Trieste was still Austria's port.

When to go

Best expression: May and September — clear, warm and with the bora unlikely. Consider: October for the Barcolana regatta, the largest sailing race in the world by entries. Avoid if possible: February, when the bora is at its most likely and the sea front is unusable.

The frame

Ideal stay 2 nights · Minimum 1 night · Best arrival train from Venice, two hours along the coast · Airport TRS, 35 km · Walkability excellent and flat in the centre · Best without a car yes, with the Opicina tram