Ancient history , a Roman triumphal arch constructed from 33 to 32 BC Since the second millennium BC, the location was an inhabited site. Originally an
Illyrian settlement, the
Veneti entered the region in the 10th–9th c. BC and seem to have given the town its name,
Tergeste, because
terg* is a Venetic word meaning market (q.v.
Oderzo, whose ancient name was
Opitergium). Later, the town was captured by the
Carni, a tribe of the
Eastern Alps, before becoming part of the
Roman Republic in 177 BC during the
Second Istrian War. After being attacked by barbarians from the interior in 52 BC, and until 46 BC, it was granted the status of Roman colony under
Julius Caesar, who recorded its name as
Tergeste in
Commentarii de Bello Gallico (51 BC), in which he recounts events of the
Gallic Wars. Roman Tergeste flourished due to its position on the road from
Aquileia, the main Roman city in the area, to
Istria, and as a port, some ruins of which are still visible. Emperor
Augustus built a line of walls around the city in 33–32 BC, while
Trajan built a theatre in the 2nd century. At the same time, the citizens of the town were enrolled in the tribe Pupinia. In 27 BC, Trieste was incorporated in
Regio X of Augustan
Italia. In the early Christian era Trieste continued to flourish. Between 138 and 161 AD, its territory was enlarged and nearby
Carni and Catali were granted Roman citizenship by the Roman Senate and Emperor Antoninus Pius at the pleading of a leading Tergestine citizen, the
quaestor urbanus, Fabius Severus. Already at the time of the Roman Empire there was a fishing village called Vallicula ("small valley") in the
Barcola area. Remains of richly decorated Roman villas, including wellness facilities, piers and extensive gardens suggest that Barcola was already a place for relaxation among the Romans because of its favourable microclimate, as it was located directly on the sea and protected from the
bora. At that time,
Pliny the Elder mentioned the vines of the wine Pulcino ("Vinum Pucinum" – probably today's "Prosecco"), which were grown on the slopes.
Middle Ages In 788, Trieste submitted to
Charlemagne, who placed it under the authority of the
count-bishop who in turn was subject to the Duke of
Friùli. During the 13th and 14th centuries, Trieste became a maritime trade rival to the
Republic of Venice, which briefly occupied it in 1283–87, before coming under the patronage of the
Patriarchate of Aquileia. After it committed a perceived offence against Venice, the Venetian State declared war against Trieste in July 1368 and by November had occupied the city. Venice intended to keep the city and began rebuilding its defences, but was forced to leave in 1372. Due to the Peace of Turin in 1381, Venice renounced its claim to Trieste and the leading citizens of Trieste petitioned
Leopold III of
Habsburg, Duke of
Austria, to annex Trieste to his domains. The agreement of voluntary submission (
dedizione) was signed at the
castle of Graz on 30 September 1382. The city maintained a high degree of autonomy under the Habsburgs, but was increasingly losing ground as a trade hub, both to Venice and to
Ragusa. In 1463, a number of Istrian communities petitioned Venice
to attack Trieste. Trieste was saved from utter ruin by the intervention of
Pope Pius II who had previously been bishop of
Trieste. However, Venice limited Trieste's territory to outside the city. Trieste would be assaulted again in 1468–1469 by Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick III. His sack of the city is remembered as the "Destruction of Trieste." He then restored the city walls for the fourth time. n historian
Johann Weikhard von Valvasor Early modern period Following an unsuccessful Habsburg invasion of Venice in the prelude to the 1508–16
War of the League of Cambrai, the Venetians occupied Trieste again in 1508, and were allowed to keep the city under the terms of the peace treaty. However, the
Habsburg Empire recovered Trieste a little over one year later, when the conflict resumed. By the 18th century Trieste became an important port and commercial hub for the Austrians. In 1719, it was granted status as a
free port within the Habsburg Empire by
Emperor Charles VI, and remained a free port until 1 July 1791. The reign of his successor,
Maria Theresa of Austria, marked the beginning of a very prosperous era for the city.
Serbs settled Trieste largely in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they soon formed an influential and rich community within the city, as a number of Serbian traders came into ownership of many important businesses and built palaces across Trieste.
19th century In the following decades, Trieste was briefly occupied by troops of the
French Empire during the
Napoleonic Wars on several occasions, in 1797, 1805 and 1809. From 1809 to 1813, Trieste was annexed into the
Illyrian Provinces, interrupting its status of free port and losing its autonomy. The municipal autonomy was not restored after the return of the city to the
Austrian Empire in 1813. 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 Austria's main trading port and shipbuilding centre was later emphasised by the foundation of the merchant shipping line
Austrian Lloyd in 1836, whose headquarters stood at the corner of the Piazza Grande and Sanità (today's
Piazza Unità d'Italia). By 1913, Austrian Lloyd had a fleet of 62 ships totalling 236,000 tonnes. With the introduction of
constitutionalism in the Austrian Empire in 1860, the municipal autonomy of the city was restored, with Trieste becoming capital of the
Austrian Littoral crown land (). With anti-clericalism on the rise in the rest of the Italian peninsula due to the
Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia's bellicose policies towards the church and its estates,
Pope Leo XIII at times considered moving his residence to Trieste or
Salzburg. However,
Emperor Franz Joseph rejected the idea. Trieste, along with
Rijeka (Fiume), served as an important base for the
Imperial-Royal Navy, which in the first decade of the 20th century embarked on a major modernisation programme. With the construction of the
Austrian Southern Railway, the first major railway in the Empire, in 1857, Trieste acquired a significant role in the trade of coal. Trieste had long been home to Italian irredentist sentiment, as evidenced by the activity at . In 1882 this fervour culminated in an attempted assassination of
Emperor Franz Joseph at the hands of Wilhem Oberdank (
Guglielmo Oberdan), while His Majesty was visiting the city. The perpetrator was arrested, tried, found guilty and ultimately sentenced to death. His legacy was regarded as worthy of martyrdom status by fellow
irredentists, while monarchical elements regarded his actions as ignominious. The Emperor, who went on to reign for thirty-four more years, never again visited Trieste.
20th century At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a bustling cosmopolitan city frequented by artists and philosophers.
James Joyce was a long-stay tourist between 1904 and 1915. Joyce worked on
Dubliners and
Ulysses while in Trieste. His students included
Italo Svevo and a bookshop run by
Umberto Saba was near Joyce's apartment. Other authors with roots in Trieste include
Claudio Magris,
Jan Morris,
Fulvio Tomizza,
Enzo Bettiza,
Susanna Tamaro, and
Ernesto Nathan Rogers.
Sigmund Freud,
Zofka Kveder,
Dragotin Kette,
Ivan Cankar, and
Scipio Slataper have also been associated with Trieste. The city was the major port on the
Austrian Riviera, a term used in tourist marketing.
World War I, annexation to Italy and Fascist era Italy, in return for entering
World War I on the side of the
Allied Powers, had been promised substantial territorial gains, which included the former
Austrian Littoral and western
Inner Carniola. Italy therefore annexed the city of Trieste at the end of the war, in accordance with the provisions of the 1915
Treaty of London and the Italian-Yugoslav 1920
Treaty of Rapallo. In the late 1920s, following Italian fascists burning down of the Slovene cultural centre in July 1920, the Slovene
militant anti-fascist organisation
TIGR carried out several bomb attacks in the city centre. In 1930 and 1941, two trials of Slovene activists were held in Trieste by the fascist Special Tribunal for the Security of the State. During the 1920s and 1930s, several monumental buildings were built in the
Fascist architectural style, including the
University of Trieste and the almost tall
Victory Lighthouse (Faro della Vittoria), which became a city landmark. The economy improved in the late 1930s, and several large infrastructure projects were carried out.
World War II and aftermath entering Trieste (the caption reads: "
Tito's Army liberated Trieste") Following the
trisection of Slovenia, starting from the winter of 1941, the first
Slovene Partisans appeared in Trieste province, although the resistance movement did not become active in the city itself until late 1943. After the
Italian armistice in September 1943, the city was occupied by
Wehrmacht troops. Trieste became nominally part of the newly constituted
Italian Social Republic, but it was de facto ruled by Germany, who created the
Operation Zone of the Adriatic Littoral (OZAK) out of former Italian north-eastern regions, with Trieste as the administrative centre. The new administrative entity was headed by
Friedrich Rainer, Gauleiter of Carinthia, named supreme commissary of the AK zone. A semblance of indigenous Italian rule was kept in the form of Cesare Pagnini, mayor of Trieste, but every civil official was assigned a representative of the supreme commissar in the form of a Deutsche Berater (German Adviser). Under German occupation, the only
concentration camp with a crematorium on Italian soil was built in a suburb of Trieste, at the
Risiera di San Sabba on 4 April 1944. From 20 October 1943, to the spring of 1944, around 25,000 Jews and partisans were interrogated and tortured in the Risiera. Three to four thousand of them were murdered here by shooting, beating or in gas vans. Most were imprisoned before being transferred to other concentration camps. The city saw intense Italian and Yugoslav
partisan activity and suffered from
Allied bombings, over 20 air raids in 1944–1945, targeting the oil refineries, port and marshalling yard but causing considerable collateral damage to the city and 651 deaths among the population. The worst raid took place on 10 June 1944, when a hundred tons of bombs dropped by 40
USAAF bombers, targeting the oil refineries, resulted in the destruction of 250 buildings, damage to another 700 and 463 victims.
Occupation by Yugoslav Partisans with a Yugoslav liberation
overprint On 30 April 1945, the Slovenian and Italian
anti-Fascist Osvobodilna fronta (OF) and National Liberation Committee (
Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, or CLN) of Edoardo Marzari and
Antonio Fonda Savio, made up of approximately 3,500 volunteers, incited a riot against the Nazi occupiers. On 1 May
Allied members of the
Yugoslav Partisans'
8th Dalmatian Corps took over most of the city, except for the courts and the castle of San Giusto, where the German garrisons refused to surrender to anyone but the New Zealanders, due to the Partisans' reputation for shooting German and Italian prisoners of war. The
2nd New Zealand Division under General
Freyberg continued to advance towards Trieste along Route 14 around the northern coast of the Adriatic sea and arrived in the city the following day (see official histories
The Italian Campaign and
Through the Venetian Line). The German forces surrendered on the evening of 2 May, but were then turned over to the Yugoslav forces. The Yugoslavs held full control of the city until 12 June, a period known in Italian historiography as the "forty days of Trieste". During this period, hundreds of local Italians and anti-Communist Slovenes were arrested by the Yugoslav authorities, and many of them were never seen again. Some were interned in Yugoslav internment camps (in particular at
Borovnica, Slovenia), while others were
murdered on the
Karst Plateau. British
Field Marshal Harold Alexander condemned the Yugoslav military occupation, stating that "Marshal Tito's apparent intention to establish his claims by force of arms...[is] all too reminiscent of Hitler, Mussolini and Japan. It is to prevent such actions that we have been fighting this war." In this most turbulent of periods, the city saw a thorough reorganisation of the political-administrative system: the Yugoslav Fourth Army, to which many figures of prominence were attached (including
Edvard Kardelj, a sign of just how important the Isonzo front was in Yugoslav aims) established a provisional Military Command in the occupied areas. Fully understanding the precarious position it found itself in, the Yugoslav Command undertook great efforts to claim the success for itself, faced with the presence of the
2nd New Zealand Division under General
Bernard Freyberg in Trieste, which could undermine, as it did, postwar claims of sovereignty and control over the seaport. The journalist Geoffrey Cox wrote that it was "the first major confrontation of the Cold War" and was "the one corner of Europe where no demarcation line had been agreed upon in advance by the Allies." To this effect, a Tanjug Agency communiqué stated: "The seaport of Trieste, Monfalcone and Gorizia could not be occupied by the above mentioned division [the New Zealand Division] as these cities had already been liberated...by the Yugoslav army...It is true that some Allied forces have without our permission entered into the above mentioned cities which might have undesirable consequences unless this misunderstanding is promptly settled by mutual agreement."
A city in limbo (1945–1947) After an agreement between the Yugoslav leader
Josip Broz Tito and Field Marshal Alexander, the Yugoslav forces withdrew from Trieste, which came under a joint British-U.S. military administration. The Julian March was divided by the
Morgan Line between Anglo-American and Yugoslav military administration until September 1947 when the
Paris Peace Treaty established the
Free Territory of Trieste. The effective turning point for Trieste's fortunes had already been established, though: President Truman's stipulations, later named the Truman Doctrine, in all but name had sealed the status quo, formalised only in the above-mentioned treaty, one that proved to be a careful balancing act between Yugoslav demands, Italian claims and international aims toward the Adriatic gulf and Eastern Europe in general. Questions arose on the structure of government as soon and even earlier than the signing of the treaty, with neither Italy nor Yugoslavia willing to recognise a joint governor. Initially, the newly established
Allied Military Government (AMG) found it difficult to exercise its authority over the newly administered territories (the Italian majority provinces of Trieste, Gorizia and Pola), because of a rooted communist presence, especially in the countryside. This state of affairs did not change until a formal peace treaty with Italy had been signed, granting the AMG the full powers to administer justice and re-establish law and order in those areas under its administration. Replacing the People's Militia, the AMG recruited a civilian police force from the indigenous population along the Anglo-Saxon police model. This exercise of jurisdiction was thus articulated: pursuant to Proclamation No. 1, three tiers of tribunals were established: the Summary Military Courts, with jurisdiction over petty crime, the Superior Military Courts, which could impose punishments not exceeding 10 years imprisonment, and the General Military Court, which could impose the death penalty. Civil courts, as modelled on the Kingdom of Italy's code, were, pursuant to General Order No. 6, re-established 12 July 1945, but the Slovene minority was given the right to be heard, and for proceedings to be, in their own language.
Zone A of the Free Territory of Trieste (1947–1954) In 1947, Trieste was declared an independent
city state under the protection of the
United Nations as the
Free Territory of Trieste. The territory was divided into two zones, A and B, along the
Morgan Line established in 1945. From 1947 to 1954, Zone A was occupied and governed by the
Allied Military Government, composed of the American
Trieste United States Troops (TRUST), commanded by Major General
Bryant E. Moore, the commanding general of the American
88th Infantry Division, and the "British Element Trieste Forces" (BETFOR), commanded by Sir
Terence Airey, who were the joint forces commander and also the military governors. Zone A covered almost the same area of the current Italian Province of Trieste, except for four small villages south of
Muggia (see below), which were given to Yugoslavia after the dissolution of the Free Territory in 1954. Occupied Zone B, which was under the administration of
Miloš Stamatović, then a colonel in the
Yugoslav People's Army, was composed of the north-westernmost portion of the Istrian peninsula, between the
Mirna River and the cape
Debeli Rtič. In 1954, in accordance with the Memorandum of London, the vast majority of Zone A—including the city of Trieste—joined Italy, whereas Zone B and four villages from Zone A (
Plavje,
Spodnje Škofije,
Hrvatini, and
Elerji) became part of Yugoslavia, divided between
Slovenia and
Croatia. The final border line with
Yugoslavia and the status of the ethnic minorities in the areas was settled bilaterally in 1975 with the
Treaty of Osimo. This line now constitutes the border between Italy and Slovenia. ==Geography==