Trieste travel guide

Top 10 sights in Trieste

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Lander at Slovenian Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Škocjan Caves

   A cave system in the Slovenian karst through which the Reka river runs underground, listed as World Heritage in 1986. Its Martel chamber is one of the largest known underground canyons in the world, and the route through takes in a collapse doline open to the sky.

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2. 

   2© Michał Bulsa · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Miramare Castle

   A white castle on the shore built between 1856 and 1860 for Archduke Maximilian, who left it to become emperor of Mexico and was shot there in 1867. His widow went mad; the rooms are kept as they were furnished, and the park holds the trees he chose himself.

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3. 

   3© Wolfgang Sauber · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Trieste Cathedral

   The cathedral of Trieste, made in the fourteenth century by knocking two earlier churches into one, which is why its plan is lopsided and it has five aisles. Roman columns from the temple below are built into its bell tower.

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4. 

   4© Twice25 & Rinina25 · CC BY 2.5

   Risiera di San Sabba

   A rice-husking mill on the edge of Trieste that the SS turned into a detention camp in 1943, the only one on Italian soil with a crematorium. Resistance prisoners were killed here and Jews held in transit to Auschwitz; the site became a national monument in 1965.

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5. 

   5© Thierry Caro · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Grotta Gigante

   A cave on the karst above Trieste whose single chamber is a hundred and seven metres high and a hundred and thirty long — for decades the largest show cave chamber in the world. Geodetic pendulums hang in it to measure the deformation of the earth's crust.

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6. 

   6© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   piazza Unità d'Italia

   The largest seafront square in Europe, open on one side to the Adriatic and closed on the others by Habsburg government palaces. It was the front door of Austria-Hungary's only major port, which is why it is out of all proportion to the city.

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7. 

   7© Andrzej Otrębski · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Synagogue of Trieste

   A synagogue of 1912, one of the largest in Europe, built for a community that ran much of the port's insurance and shipping. Trieste was the port most Jewish emigrants left Europe from, and the building is deliberately monumental.

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   Vilenica Cave

   A cave near Lokev with visitors recorded as early as 1633, which makes it the oldest show cave in Europe. A literary prize is awarded in its main chamber each September, read to an audience sitting on the rock.

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9. 

   9© User:Zinn · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Saint Spyridon Church

   A Serbian Orthodox church of 1869 in blue and gold with a central dome, built by a merchant community that came to Trieste from the Ottoman Balkans. Its treasury holds icons and documents going back to 1751.

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10. 

    10© Twice25 & Rinina25 · CC BY 2.5

    Duino Castle

    A fourteenth-century castle on a cliff above the gulf, still owned by the Thurn und Taxis family. Rilke stayed here in 1912 and began the Duino Elegies; a path along the cliff below the castle is named after him.

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1. 

   1© Zinn · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Arco di Riccardo

   A Roman gate in the middle of the old town of Trieste in Italy. It is the only surviving piece of the wall built in 33-32 BC, stands 7.2 metres high, and its name appears to be a corruption of cardo, the north-south street of the Roman town.

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   2

   Sant'Antonio Taumaturgo, Trieste

   The largest Catholic church in Trieste, designed in 1808 and finished in 1849, standing at the head of the Grand Canal with a Roman temple front and six statues on the parapet. It closes the view down the canal from the sea.

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   3

   Revoltella Museum

   A museum of modern and contemporary art in Trieste in Italy. Baron Pasquale Revoltella left his house on Piazza Venezia to the city together with his art, furniture and books, and it opened in 1872.

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   4

   Holy Trinity Church

   A small church inside a walled enclosure at Hrastovlje, painted throughout in 1490 by John of Kastav. Its Dance of Death — a procession in which death leads king, bishop, merchant and child equally to the grave — is the most complete of its kind in this region.

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5. 

   5© Wolfgang Sauber · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Greek Orthodox Church of San Nicolò dei Greci

   The Greek Orthodox church of Trieste, built between 1784 and 1787 for a merchant community that Maria Theresa had invited to settle the free port. Its blue and gold interior faces the sea front where their ships tied up.

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6. 

   6© EliziR · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Assumption of Mary Church, Koper

   The cathedral of Koper, begun in the twelfth century with three apses and refaced in Gothic and then Venetian Renaissance. Its bell tower was the town's watchtower, and the square in front is the Venetian centre of the Slovenian coast.

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7. 

   7© Yerpo · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Socerb Castle

   A medieval castle near the village of Socerb in Koper in Slovenia, not far from the Italian border. It was built on a cliff more than 350 metres high to hold off Hungarian incursions.

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8. 

   8© Elena Torre · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Trieste City Hall

   The city hall of 1875 closing the landward side of the main square, in an eclectic neo-Renaissance with a clock tower whose two bronze figures strike the hours. It was built when Trieste was Austria's port and had money.

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9. 

   9© David Bolton from UK · CC BY 2.0

   Da Ponte Fountain

   An eighteenth-century fountain in Koper built as a bridge in miniature — an arch over the basin — because the Venetian governor who brought water to the town was named Da Ponte, which means of the bridge.

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    Istituto ed orto botanico

    A municipal botanical garden at Trieste in Friuli Venezia Giulia in Italy. It began in 1842 as a trial planting of Austrian black pine and took the form of a botanical garden from 1861, with plants gathered in Istria, Dalmatia and the Julian Alps.

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