Trieste

Reading novels for so many years has left me with unrealistic expectations. As a child, I longed to meet pirates and smugglers. My teenage reading led me to believe that happy-ever-after endings inevitably followed the clinch on the final page. If I caught a sleeper train, I was disappointed if there was no murder in the next-door compartment. Hence I expected Trieste to resemble a city in an Eric Ambler novel: murky, raffish and with clear remnants of its Austro-Hungarian past. Instead I found a big industrial port with a highly urban centre of over-decorated buildings, many of which are being renovated. Unlike Milan or Turin, though, Trieste’s urbanness is relieved by facing towards the sea.

(To be honest, I’m not sure that a murky raffish city would be quite my cup of tea anyway.)

We were on the trail of lo stile Liberty – Italian art nouveau, which keeps traditional Italian features (putti, overhanging eaves, ashlar) and just adds more. In Trieste’s case “more” includes lots of underdressed females. It’s particular and eclectic – but hard to like. Unsurprisingly in such an important port, many of the largest and most lavish buildings belong to insurance companies. The needy call for independence refers to a wish in some quarters to return to Trieste’s free port (i.e. untaxed) status. The café was a temple to the coffee bean – and reminded me of the conviviality of Italian life (stereotype alert) that balances the feeling of being enclosed.

I was pleased to see an allegorical female with cogwheel above the Assicurazioni Generali building in the main square: I haven’t seen one for a while.

The day ended at the Museo Revoltella; I couldn’t take any more 19th-century eclectic bling, so I headed to the art gallery. The current preoccupation of acknowledging historical injustices and oversights has not yet reached here, so the 19th-century paintings were mostly by men and mostly of women with or without diaphanous drapery. A slight change after WWI, with the “return to order”: a more rational and less romantic approach. There was one hyper-real and slightly disturbing painting of First Communion by Carl Frithjof Smith which stood out for me.