Set between the sea and the hills, Trieste stands again the blue of the sea and the sky, appearing almost like a last mirage of the Mediterranean to anyone following this northern stretch of the Adriatic coast. It is of ancient origin, for it was already a centre for travel and trade well before Rome was founded, yet there are few traces now of its distant past. There were many early settlements throughout the territory from the plateau to the sea: the so called "castellieri", little villages perched on a hillside, protected with typical stone fortifications. They were inhabited, as early as two thousand years before Christ, by an Illyrian people of Indo-European descent. According to legend, even the ships of the Greek heroes arrived here: in their flight from Colchis, Jason and the Argonauts reached the mouth of the river Timavo. From Troy came Antenor and Diomedes, the whom - according to the geographer Strabo - a sacred wood was dedicated on the slopes of Mount Ermada, where the Timavo re-emerged with three karst springs after disappearing under-ground at San Canziano.

A short distance away, high on the steep rocky cliff overlooking the sea, the Castle of Duino stands guard, once the seat of the feudal vassals of the Patriarch of Aquileia. The enchantment of its surroundings prompted Rainer Maria Rilke to compose his immortal "Duino Elegies". Today the little town of Duino has become an international centre thanks to the presence of the Upper Adriatic College of the United World, which hosts children from all over the world.
The image that Trieste presents today reveals a town that is decidedly more modern than its neighbours. But it has many faces which it gradually reveals to the visitor To appreciate its charm in full one must be patient and go in search of its most hidden corners. There are many surprises in store for the careful observer.

To find the oldest traces of the town, the Roman town of Octavian Augustus, we must start off from San Giusto. In fact the urban layout of Tergeste, which became a colony in 52 BC, was conditioned by the hill on which the symbols of the town, the castle and the cathedral, now stand. Today we can still see the Basilica of the Forum, the centre of Roman public life.
The Cathedral stands on the remains of an early Christian building which was destroyed during Barbarian raids, and two adjacent basilicas, erected between the ninth and the eleventh century, and united in the fourteenth century. The Castle too, home of the Town Museum, also has a long history: it took nearly two centuries to build and was completed in 1630, on the remains of previous castles.
At the foot of the hill lies the Roman theatre, built entirely of masonry at the end of the first century. >Leaving the narrow streets of the "old town" behind us, the little township once enclosed by medieval walls, we can gaze out over the great modern development of Trieste. Piazza Unità d'Italia, the "hearth" of the town, embraced by the sea, is dominated by neo-classical buildings, in a style of architecture that marked the dawn of the town's golden age, in the early nineteenth century.
After famines, plague, wars with his powerful neighbours, the century of light and of the great power of House of Habsburg, at the head of a multi-national empire, had offered Trieste a different destiny. It was the desire of the Emperor that this small seaside town (subjected to the royal House of Austria, though maintaining the prerogatives it had enjoyed as a commune since 1382) should become a great port for Central Europe. The project attracted merchants, businessmen and adventure seekers from all countries.

These new strengths transformed Trieste from a rural village with a few thousand inhabitants into a metropolis which, in the mid nineteenth century, had as many as one hundred and fifty thousand; two leading insurance companies were founded there, as well as shipyards, shipping
companies and financial enterprises. The elegant theatre dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi, the monumental Tergesteo Gallery, the imposing buildings of the Chamber of Commerce and
the Stock Exchange reveal the importance of the negotiations carried out at this international crossroads. A town of business and bartering, but also a town which has remained Mediterranean in its rhythms, in the people's way of taking a break in one of its many historic coffee houses, or walking along the Audace wharf there they can fill their eyes with the sea and the sky, gazing out towards the horizon and thinking of tomorrow. The town's ancient vocation for trade is perpetuated today in the port, one of the first in Europe for container traffic and for importing coffee. With its important technological structures it fits into a vast programme of international development in which its many scientific interests also play an important role. In the sixties a great number of institutes grew up in Trieste around the Centre for Theoretical Physics at Miramare; they were engaged in study and research, but also in the planning and realisation of new scientific and technological developments. On the Carso are the structures of the principal multi-sector scientific park in Italy, AREA Science Park, where more than eight hundred people are employed. AREA hosts about forty centres and companies engaged in research and services, among them the international centre for genetic engineering and biotechnology, and the Sincrotrone Trieste company which has constructed the ELETTRA light machine. It is here, on the hills from which the most ancient inhabitants of these lands used to look out to sea, that the Trieste of the third millennium is being constructed.

Fonte: Touring Club Italiano