Background After the
fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Trieste was a
Byzantine military outpost. In 567 AD the city was destroyed by the
Lombards, in the course of their invasion of northern Italy. In 788 it became part of the
Frankish kingdom, under the authority of their
count-bishop. From 1081 the city came loosely under the
Patriarchate of Aquileia, developing into a free
commune by the end of the 12th century. After two centuries of war, Trieste came with the signing of a peace treaty on 30 October 1370 in front of
St. Bartholomew's Church in the village of
Šiška () (now part of
Ljubljana) under the
Republic of Venice. The Venetians retained the town until 1378, when it became the property of the
Patriarchate of Aquileia. Discontent with the patriarch's rule, the main citizens of Trieste in 1382 petitioned
Leopold III of
Habsburg,
Duke of Austria to become part of his domains, in exchange for his defence. subsequently consolidated as the
Austrian Littoral ().
Trieste in the Holy Roman Empire Following an unsuccessful
Habsburg invasion of Venice in the prelude to the
War of the League of Cambrai, the Venetians occupied Trieste again in 1508, and under the terms of the peace were allowed to keep the city. The Habsburg Empire recovered Trieste a little over a year later, however, when conflict resumed. With their acquisition by the Habsburgs,
Carniola and the Julian March ceased to act as an east-facing outpost of Italy against the unsettled peoples of the Danube basin, becoming a region of contact between the land-based Austrian domains and the
maritime republic of Venice, whose foreign policy depended on control of the
Adriatic.
Italian irredentism was continually popular — writing in 1917, the Italian nationalist
Litta Visconti Arese described the city as: Trieste became an important port and trade hub. In June 1717, From June 1734, Charles VI began assembling a navy in the city.
Trieste in the Austrian Empire and Austria–Hungary Following the Napoleonic Wars, Trieste continued to prosper as the
free imperial city of Trieste (), a status that granted economic freedom, but limited its political self-government. The city's role as main Austrian trading port and shipbuilding centre was later emphasised with the foundation of the merchant shipping line
Austrian Lloyd in 1836, whose headquarters stood at the corner of the Piazza Grande and Sanità. By 1913, Austrian Lloyd had a fleet of 62 ships comprising a total of With the introduction of the
constitutionalism in the Austrian Empire in 1860, the municipal autonomy of the city was restored, with Trieste becoming capital of the '''', the
Austrian Littoral region. In the later part of the 19th century,
Pope Leo XIII considered moving his residence to Trieste (or to
Salzburg), due to what he considered a hostile anti-Catholic climate in Italy, following the
capture of Rome by the newly founded
Kingdom of Italy. However, the Austrian monarch
Franz Josef I gently rejected this idea. The modern
Austro-Hungarian Navy used Trieste's shipbuilding facilities for construction and as a base. The Austrian acquisition of
Lombardy-Veneto (1815–66) meant that Trieste was no longer in a frontier zone, which aimed for the annexation to Italy of all the lands they claimed were inhabited by an Italian-speaking population. Many local Italians enrolled voluntarily in the
Royal Italian Army (a notable example is the writer
Scipio Slataper). After the end of
World War I, the
Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, and many of its border areas, including the
Austrian Littoral, were disputed among its successor states. On November 3, 1918, the
Armistice of Villa Giusti was signed ending hostilities between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Trieste, with
Istria and
Gorizia was occupied by the
Italian Army after the Austro-Hungarian troops had been ordered to lay down their arms, a day before the Armistice was due to enter into effect, effectively allowing the Italians to claim the region had been taken before the cessation of hostilities (a similar situation occurred in
South Tyrol). Trieste was lost to
Austria at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye and officially annexed to the
Kingdom of Italy at
Rapallo in 1920. If the
Liberal governments ruling Italy at time granted Trieste of its ancient autonomy, maintained most of former Austrian laws, and simply gave a new name to the
Austrian Littoral as
Julian March () without any other legal change,
Fascist violence which occurred to
Socialists and
Christian Democrats in other parts of Italy, were suffered by
Slovene organizations in Trieste. The union to Italy brought a loss of importance to the city, as it was now a city on the margin of Italy's map, cut off from its economic hinterland. The
Slovene ethnic group (around 25% of the population according to the 1910 census) suffered persecution by rising
Italian Fascism. The period of violent persecution of Slovenes began with riots on 13 April 1920, which were organized as a retaliation for the assault on Italian occupying troops in
Split by the local Croatian population. Many Slovene-owned shops and buildings were destroyed during the riots, which culminated when a group of Italian Fascists, led by
Francesco Giunta, burned down the ("
National Hall"), the community hall of Trieste's Slovenes. The end of Trieste autonomy was a consequence of the
March on Rome in 1922. Immediately after their rise to power, the
Fascists abolished the Austrian administrative structure of the
Julian March, which was divided between the newly formed
Province of Trieste, of which
Trieste became a mere
municipality, and the
Province of Pola; the remainder of the territory was annexed by the
Province of Udine. == Demographics ==