Where the Wind Remembers

Trieste is a city that seems to have been unearthed from the bottom drawer of a well-travelled desk—forgotten for a while, perhaps, but still scented with ink, salt, and old ambition. Here, on the northeastern edge of Italy, I recently spent several days drinking in the atmosphere of this unique city with its Venetian, Slavic and Germanic influences.

The first thing that struck me in Trieste is the light: a diffused, marine clarity that turns limestone facades into parchment and makes the Adriatic shimmer like a secret. The city, once the main port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, still carries itself with imperial posture—Habsburg architecture lining its boulevards, as though waiting for the return of some long-banished archduke. As you move from the stately grandeur of its squares to the medieval layout of the lively Cavana district – once the home of fishermen and sailors and still filled with rambunctious bars and nightlife – it becomes clear that Trieste is a palimpsest, layered with Slovenian whispers, Viennese flourishes, and the romantic melancholy of a once-great port that is by turns quiet and reflective, lively and bustling.

Trieste doesn’t behave quite like the rest of Italy—and it doesn’t seem especially bothered by that fact. It sits up in the corner of the map pretending not to notice that Rome, Florence and Milan are off doing something fashionable and loud. There are no crowds shuffling behind tour guides waving flags. No queues of sunburnt people looking for gelato. You can walk around Trieste and still hear your own thoughts—which at times feels almost unnerving. And totally refreshing.

Its multiple influences also permeate its cuisine, which is consistently good and affordable. Trieste also seems unaware that the rest of the country has doubled its prices. As befits a city on the sea with a Venetian heritage there is the best of seafood. And then there are the buffets. Forget the English connotation of a self-service restaurant. Buffets are what the Triestini call their wonderfully no-nonsense old-school trattorie. Here you’ll order and eat, without fuss and without pretension, dishes that you won’t find anywhere else in the country, like jota – a soup of beans, sauerkraut and potatoes that sounds like a dare but turns out to be delicious; or porzina – boiled pork meat with horseradish, washed down with a glass of terrano—everything brisk, hot, and filling.

Then there’s the coffee, which has its own dialect. Ask for a caffè macchiato and you’ll out yourself as not from round these parts immediately. Here, it’s ‘nero’ for espresso, ‘capo’ for a macchiato, and ‘capo in B’ if you want it in a glass. It’s not just coffee, it’s a local code. A quiet reminder that Trieste, as a major coffee importer, has always done things its own way. And probably better.

If you love lingering in cafés, this is the city for you. Antico Caffè San Marco, with its dark wood and hushed atmosphere, seems designed for eavesdropping and unfinished novels. Caffè Tommaseo is a bit more theatrical—mirrors, chandeliers, the sort of place where people pretend to read while watching each other. These were the haunts of Svevo, Saba, and Joyce, who came to Trieste, fell in love with its complicated personality, and stayed longer than planned. James Joyce is still here, in fact—striding in bronze over the Canal Grande, looking distracted, probably editing something in his head.

You easily notice the layers of history without needing a guidebook. There’s a Roman forum, slightly slouched but still standing, behind the cathedral, and the spectacular San Giusto castle dominating the hill and another – the Castello di Miramare – perched dramatically on the edge of the sea, built by an unfortunate Habsburg who set off to rule Mexico and never came back. And the city quietly honours Johann Winckelmann—the father of art history and archaeology and a pioneering Hellenist—who was murdered here in 1768. As a ‘sorry your visit didn’t go quite as planned’ the city dedicated a museum to him, small but intense, stuffed with treasures, like a footnote that insists on being read.

Not all of Trieste’s past is elegant. The Risiera di San Sabba—a former rice mill turned Nazi prison and death camp, the only one on Italian soil—is stark, silent, and deeply unsettling. It doesn’t try to aestheticise suffering. It simply shows you the facts and lets the silence do the rest.

There’s a particular kind of introspection here—not sadness, exactly, but a cool detachment. A Mitteleuropean habit of reflection. Trieste doesn’t demand affection. It earns it slowly, through understatement and detail: the scent of roasted coffee beans carried on the bora wind, which arrives out of nowhere, flinging open shutters and rearranging hairstyles, the sound of church bells and foghorns competing across the harbour; the way the city lets you be curious without making a fuss about it.

For all its self-contained charm, Trieste is also a perfect place to set off from. It’s a gateway to the lesser-known corners of Friuli-Venezia Giulia—where you can drink ribolla gialla in quiet vineyards, explore Carso villages that still whisper in dialect, and eat food that forgets whether it’s Slavic or Alpine or Italian. Slovenia is right there. Croatia is a morning drive away. It’s the kind of base that rewards you for having a car, a map and a wandering spirit.

Trieste is the original gateway and melting pot – a city that defies definition, so I’ll leave it to a compatriot and far better writer – Jan Morris – historian, traveller and author of “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere” to sum up why the city spoke to her:

“There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones. They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it. It is the nation of nowhere, and I have come to think that its natural capital is Trieste.”