THE “BATHS” OF TRIESTE. THE BATHING ESTABLISHMENT AT THE LANTERN TRIESTE
At the beginning of the 19th century, taking a bath in Trieste was considered an activity to be encouraged for the well-being and health of citizens.
In Trieste the “tociada” took place even before the birth of the bathing establishments. Old Town boys and sailors at the beginning of the 19th century used to dive into the waters of the port or into the Grand Canal between one boat and another, risking being hit by a sailing ship that transported goods. “Anyone found swimming naked between one Lazaretto and the other will inevitably be arrested and punished, and as for the boys, punished will also be punished”. The offending area was the space between the Lazzaretto Vecchio, that of San Carlo (which stood right where the Museo del Mare is today) and the Lazzaretto Nuovo of Maria Teresa in the Roiano area. Taken from a “Notice” dating back to 7 June 1809, signed by Cavalier Ignazio de Capuano, Dean of the Magistrate. “Place of public baths” when this writing appeared on a pole you could bathe. Surely outside the lazarets and especially in Sant’Andrea where sailors could train themselves in swimming. In the first decades of the 19th century, the “floating baths” arose on the stretch of sea in front of the city, anchored to rafts, hence the Triestine saying “let’s go to the bath”.
On 24 May 1823, in front of Piazza Giuseppina (today Piazza Venezia), the first city bathing establishment, the “Soglio di Nettuno”, was opened, accessible by boat or on a footbridge. Inside, tanks were built for taking hot and fresh water baths, a cafeteria with refreshments, an aquarium with flora and fauna of the gulf and even a smoking room. On June 13, 1832, the “Bagno” was visited by the Emperor of Austria Francesco I. The owner and inventor of the bathroom was the merchant Domenico d ‘Angeli.
This was followed by the construction of other floating “Bagni” such as the “Bagno Maria”, moored at the San Carlo pier (today Molo Audace). It was a floating establishment, built in wood, 50 meters long by 26 meters and in summer it was moored at molo San Carlo (today Molo Audace). It had a capacity of two hundred people, reserved, it seems, especially for the customers of the luxurious Hotel “De la Ville”, on the banks. It had been built at the San Rocco shipyard in Muggia and, here, in winter, it would return for maintenance. Built in 1857, active until 1911, when it was destroyed by a storm. The “Bagno Boscaglia” with wooden structure, anchored in the open sea, often disassembled at the end of the bathing season or anchored in a winter bag. A special vaporetto transported bathers to the “Boscaglia”. A few years after its inauguration, it changed owner and became the “Bagno Buchler” and in 1898 it was completely renovated and modernized. In 1891 it was named “National Float”. Unfortunately, the bath was completely destroyed together with the other floating baths, in the night between 13 and 14 June 1911 due to a violent storm that seriously damaged the shores in many places, sinking boats and sailing ships and causing some deaths.
The “Bagno Fontana” was built around 1899 and was not a floating “Bagno” but well positioned on the ground near the Sacchetta. Luxuriously served by the horse-drawn tram, it seems to have been destroyed for the construction of the Campo Marzio station. Joyce mentions the Bagno Fontana in the Trieste column, in a passage entitled “Giorgino”, dedicated to her newborn son: «I used to keep it at sea in the baths of Fontana and …
At the end of the 19th century, the cliff along the Santa Teresa pier (today Fratelli Bandiera) was the favorite place for poor people to sunbathe on the rocks called cape ”(like the lace on the ladies’ dresses). The first public bathing establishment was built in the early 1900s, the inauguration seems to have taken place in 1903 even though previously a bathing establishment, the “Bagno Fortuna”, already existed.
At the end of the 19th century, there was a lack of specific permanent structures that would allow especially the poorest citizens to take advantage of the benefits of the bathroom. In 1903 the Municipality of Trieste built, near the cliff along the Santa Teresa pier (today Fratelli Bandiera), the first public bathing establishment called “Bagno Alla Lanterna” whose name derives from the lantern placed on the pier in 1832 as a maritime lighthouse. The pier, on which the establishment develops, rests on the remains of an ancient structure of Roman derivation that connected the mainland with the islet or rock called dello Zucco on which the foundations of the lighthouse rested. The “Bagno” was then called “El Pedocin” by the people of Trieste, perhaps because there were as many people as there were mussels (in dialect “pedoci”) attached to the rocks, or because the military went there to “snoop” or,
finally, because the people brought “Ciodin” nails (small nail) from home to hang their clothes. It was built in wood complete with a dividing fence between men and women and the penalties against any trespassing between the two areas were very severe.
In the 1930s, the wooden structures were replaced with concrete and thus the famous wall was born that still divides the plant in half, extending into the sea. “El Pedocin” remains the only bathing establishment in Europe where a wall strictly separates the beach into two areas, one reserved for women and children under the age of 12 and the other for males, arousing the curiosity of journalists and tourists from Worldwide.
MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITY J.J. WINCKELMANN TRIESTE
The history of the Museum begins in 1833 with the inauguration of the cenotaph of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, a distinguished scholar of ancient history and classical art, considered the founder of modern art history and father of archeology, who died tragically in Trieste on June 8 1768. The monument to Winckelmann became the center of the future museum which was born with the aim of favoring the study of art and archeology.
The collection of ancient material was favored by the geographical position of Trieste and by the commercial-maritime relations with the classical lands from Egypt to Mesoamerica. The Museum has been housed since 1925 in a three-storey neoclassical building and preserves, alongside the archaeological materials of prehistory and local protohistory, the Egyptian collection, those of Greek, Tarantine and Cypriot vases, and the rooms dedicated to the Roman and Mayan civilization.
The Mayan collection “Cesare Fabietti” is mainly made up of a series of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines made of terracotta by a population of Mayan culture dating from between 600 and 1000 AD.
The Museum overlooks the Captain’s Garden, so named for its relevance to the Caesarean Captain, who ruled the city in the name of the Austrian Emperor and resided in the Castle of San Giusto. Here are preserved sculptures, tombstones and inscriptions from the medieval-modern era.
CIVIC MARINE AQUARIUM TRIESTE
The Civic Marine Aquarium of Trieste was inaugurated in 1933 on the premises of one side of the building that then housed the city’s Central Fish Market. The building, which overlooks the sea, was erected in 1913 to a design by the architect Giorgio Polli and currently houses the “Salone degli Incanti”, a space dedicated to exhibitions and cultural meetings. The marine aquarium occupies the ground floor and the first floor of the part that includes the clock tower on which a bell tower stands.
In reality, the bell tower contains a tank of water taken directly from the sea and which, through a powerful pumping system, is pushed into the tower at a height of about 10 meters. When the large settling tank is filled, the water, by gravity, is delivered to the ground floor where there are about thirty tanks. The advantage of this system consists in the continuous replacement of the water while leaving its plankton content intact.
The tanks are of different sizes, the largest contain environments of the upper Adriatic, such as the breeding of mussels, while the smaller ones host the typical species of the Mediterranean Sea, including lobsters, lobsters, sea bream, sea bass, scorpion fish, snappers, morays, mullets and murmurs. The various groups of coelenterates, annelids, molluscs, echinoderms, crustaceans and fish come mainly from the Gulf of Trieste.
On the ground floor, in the large octagonal tank of about 10,000 liters, small sharks and rays are housed.
The Vivarium occupies the first floor of the marine aquarium and contains numerous species of amphibians and reptiles Among the traditional terrariums it is possible to observe the three species of vipers of the North East of Italy, while, in the large vertical terrarium, you can admire large specimens tropical such as iguanas, pythons and boas which, in rotation, are hosted in the Vivarium.
THE LITTLE MERMAID OF TRIESTE
220 centimeters high, a slender and shapely physique, naked covered only by a veiled drapery against the wind is the sculpture the “Mula de Trieste” created by the Trieste artist Nino Spagnoli in 2005, placed on the rocks near the shipyard of the Cedas harbor
The work depicts a girl who is undressing to immerse herself in the water. It is said that the name given to the statue is Giulia, the girl who inspired the artist who had seen running in viale XX Settembre … 19 years old, long legs and well-rounded shoulders … Mula in the sense of hybrid, cross of more ethnic groups, testimony of the existence of several cultures in the city of Trieste.The statue is a tribute to the beauty and temperament of Trieste women.
PROMENADE OF BARCOLA TRIESTE
The popular “scoierà” overlooked by the pine forest and the coast was built on the initiative of the Duke of Aosta when he was a guest of the Miramar castle.
The Municipality, in order to allow bathing, prohibited on the cliffs, opened the CEDAS public bath in 1926 which, however, failed to contain the summer mass of bathers. The Cedas was open on a wide expanse of sea and surrounded on three sides by a boundary wall; the highest part of this enclosed the caretaker’s house and two terraces where one took the sun. It was a communal bathroom, and there was no entrance fee; but in the women’s ward there was a large changing room, adjacent to the caretaker’s house, which could be accessed for a very modest surcharge. This lasted until 1966. On November 4 of that year, a violent storm swept away the structures, except those at sea.
In 1935 the municipality commissioned the construction of two pairs of semicircular terraces, distributed between men and women, below the street level so as not to obstruct the view of the gulf for those who passed on the road. In 1945 the factories were destroyed by the Germans and in 1953 the Allied Military Government financed the reconstruction to which another seven were added in 1959 for a total of ten terraces and two embankments, one with a beach and one without. The name Bagno Topolino appeared in the municipality documents for the first time in 1959 and indicated the first four terraces.
The origin of the name probably lay in the fact that the bathroom was as small as a mouse compared to the other establishments of the time in the city, in fact, it was initially called only Topolin and was paired with Pedocin (alla Lanterna). Currently the name has become the “Topolini”, perhaps due to the fact that the ten semicircular terraces coupled two by two seen from above recall the shape of the ears of Miky Mouse, the Mickey Mouse from Walt Disney Studios.
The establishments have transformed the Barcolana Riviera, up to the Miramàr, into a public and free bathing area and even today the Barcola seafront is the usual place for Trieste’s inhabitants who go to sunbathe and swim in the sea or to practice sports activities at the open.
MUSEUM OF THE WAR FOR PEACE DIEGO DE HENRIQUEZ TRIESTE
The De Henriquez museum represents one of the major Italian museum attractions in the sector. The message delivered to history by its founder is a letter H that incorporates the initial of the surname, and is crossed by a band of bright colors, alluding to the flag of peace. The de Henriquez collection, owned by the Municipality since 1983, exhibited in the museum, is composed of: 15,000 inventoried objects, of which 2800 weapons, 24,000 photographs, 287 diaries (38,000 pages), 12,000 books, 2,600 posters and flyers, 500 prints, 470 geographical and topographical maps, 30 archival collections, 290 musical documents, 150 paintings, a collection of films (250 cinematographic documents kept at the Istituto Luce in Rome), and documents relating to both the first and second world war as well as some unique and extraordinary pieces.
The permanent exhibition entitled “1914-1918 The Funeral of Peace” is dedicated to the history of the First World War and starts from the hearse of the Zimolo company in Trieste (early 1900s), of the same type as those that on 2 July 1914 transported the body of Archduke Francesco Ferdinando, nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph I and heir to the throne of the Habsburgs, and that of his wife Duchess Sofia Chotek from the Piazza Grande (now Unit) to the southern station of Trieste.
A large part of the space is attributed to the large guns and to the rotated vehicles relating to the period and accompanied by explanatory texts. A path rich in history through the sections dedicated to Propaganda, the Trench, the Industrial War, up to the sectors of the defeat of Caporetto, where one of the saddest pages of Italian history is illustrated, and the Last Front where they are told the final stages of the conflict. An interesting parenthesis on “1914-1918 Trieste at war” outlines the history and fate of the city from the period immediately preceding the conflagration to the end of the war.
Contains the largest collection of small, medium and large weapons in Italy.
Diego de Henriquez was born in Trieste on February 20, 1909, from an early age he devoted himself with passion to collecting objects of the most varied nature, but the beginning of the great war collection began in 1941, when called to arms he was authorized by his superiors to recover ” war prey “. He began to set up a war museum, at the same time he created a newspaper of the 25th sector, compiled a guide relating to the same sector and set up a photographic laboratory. After 1945, being a skilled diplomat, he managed with the authorities of the various occupying troops in the territory, to obtain other military material which increased his already large collection.
THE HYDRODYNAMICS CENTRAL TRIESTE
The Port of Trieste was one of the first ports in the world to equip itself with a Hydrodynamic Power Station. The complex of the Hydrodynamic Power Station of Porto Vecchio in Trieste is considered a jewel of industrial archeology. It was among the first to be built between 1887 and 1890 in the historic port district of Trieste, based on the project of the Trieste engineer Luigi Buzzi.
With a rectangular shape of 90 x 25 meters it came into operation in 1891 and became the energy center of the entire old port. All the steam engines capable of handling the cranes, the freight elevators of the docks and warehouses of the port that operated up to six kilometers away were concentrated in a single plant. The drawbridge, located on the Trieste shores, which crossed the Ponterosso Canal, was also operated by the Hydrodynamic Power Station.
The facade, in classical style and embellished with simple decorations, after the restoration, was colored in “Austrian yellow”, almost a tribute to the Habsburg origins of the Old Port.
The hydrodynamic system is still well preserved today and consists of: four machines, pumps, made by “Breitfeld-Danek & Co” of Prague-Karolinenthal and a fifth for smaller productions;
two tanks placed on the large mezzanine; three of the ten large Lancashire Cornish-type boilers produced in Vienna and, finally, two hydraulic accumulators located in the two twin towers, about 20 meters high, built on either side of the main entrance.
A third tower, the piezometric tower, connected to the power plant was located at the entrance to the port about 1500 meters away and allowed the stabilization of the water pressure.
The hydrodynamic pole is completed by a chimney about 40 meters high and, at the time, also by a coal deposit and a repair shop.
Over time, the hydrodynamic system proved insufficient to sustain the necessary expansion and, in 1913, on the design of the architect Zaninovich, a new building was built in the area adjacent to the power plant which housed the electrical conversion substation, which was operational until to 1989 and partially in use until 2006. The power plant provided energy for almost a hundred years until June 15, 1988 when the Port Authority decommissioned it due to the very high maintenance costs and the adoption of more modern technologies for the supply of motive power to port facilities. Since 2011 the building has been restored and has become a museum center.
THE SANCTUARY OF MONTE GRISA TRIESTE
“The National Shrine of Mary Mother and Queen is located on a karst ridge 330 meters above sea level, on Mount Grisa, with a spectacular view of the city and visible from all the towns overlooking the gulf. Due to its size and location, the temple is considered to be the most majestic religious building in Trieste.
“If with the protection of the Madonna Trieste is saved, I will make every effort to have a church erected in her honor”. On 30 April 1945, the archbishop of Trieste, Monsignor Antonio Santin, made a vow to the Madonna for the salvation of the city threatened with destruction by the war. In 1948, after the war, Msgr. Strazzacappa, at the end of a program proposed to rekindle devotion to the Madonna throughout Italy by making known the message of Fatima, proposed to build a temple of national interest dedicated to the Madonna in Trieste. 10 years later in 1958 during a meeting of the Italian Bishops’ Conference held in Rome, the wish of the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII was taken into serious consideration, who invited the Italian Bishops, as had already been done in other countries, to consecrate Italy to Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1959, Pope John XXIII decided that the Temple in Trieste would be dedicated to Mary Mother and Queen as a symbol of peace and unity among all peoples. From April to September 1959 the so-called “pilgrimage of wonders” took place and the statue of Our Lady of Fatima crossed the 92 provincial capitals of Italy starting from Sicily and ending in Trieste on September 17, 1959, when Monsignor Antonio Santin took delivery of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima.
On 19 September, the first stone of the great Temple was finally placed on Monte Grisa. It was the time of the “cold war” and the Sanctuary located right on the borders of Communist Europe, would thus become a symbol and a plea for union between peoples, in particular between the West and the East. the statue of the Madonna returned to the Chapel of Fatima and the Bishop of Leiria, Monsignor Joao Pereira Venancio, under whose jurisdiction the Sanctuary of Fatima is located, welcomed the desire of many pilgrims to have a copy of the statue of the Madonna in the Temple in Trieste and he wanted to bring her personally from Portugal to Trieste. It arrived in Trieste by sea and was transported in procession to the Church of San Giusto, remained there for almost 6 years, until the construction of the sanctuary consecrated on May 22, 1966 was completed. The Marian Temple of Monte Grisa collects the memory of four national events: the vow made by Msgr. Santin for the salvation of Trieste (April 30, 1945), the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (September 13, 1959), the memory of the fallen and missing soldiers (1945) and the drama of the Julian-Dalmatian Exodus.
The Sanctuary was designed by Eng. Antonio Guacci, professor at the University of Trieste, at the end of the 1950s based on a sketch by the archbishop of Trieste and Koper Antonio Santin. The designer was inspired by the “solitary diamond” set on the ring of the beauties of Trieste, and his intent was to attract everyone’s gaze upwards, following the example of the Virgin Mary to whom the Temple is dedicated.
The module used for the reinforced concrete building is the isosceles triangle, with the base equal to the height, a geometric figure that is repeated in every architectural element, rich in multiple symbolic meanings. The triangle in biblical symbolic language represents the transcendence of God and evokes the letter M as a symbol of the Virgin Mary.
There are two churches: lower and upper. The lower church, oriented from North to South, with its baseness, symbolizes humanity in its creatural dimension and with the intertwining of light beams and shadows it gives an aura of mystery inside that invites reflection and silence.
In addition to the main altar, dedicated to the unknown soldier, it is dotted with altars and a chapel. The upper church, oriented from East to West with its eminent height, symbolizes transcendence, divinity. The glass walls give the classroom transparency and brightness that make it in continuity with the sky, the sea and the surrounding vegetation and the large triangular profile of the structure with the tip inwards, to form the bell compartment, draws a large “Emme” (M) the monogram of Mary
The glass triangles that cover the facade supported by reinforced concrete ridges form a long sequence of letters (A) and (M) which represent the initials of the angelic greeting: “Ave Maria”.
The interior of the upper church is modeled like a honeycomb due to the multiplicity of hexagonal elements that cover its walls, so much so that they resemble the lattice of cells, filled with honey, of a hive. This symbolic dimension actualizes the charisma of the Temple which reads: ”from this honeycomb, the Temple; the mother and queen bee, the Madonna; she wants to dispense her honey, her heavenly graces to all those who come to pray to her “.
The lateral altars, with a triangular shape, form the “emme” (M) of Mary and the form of the triangle also appears in the cross above the altar of the Eucharist, composed of a dense weave of large colored crystals that form the 5 lobes of the cross, signifying the 5 wounds of Jesus crucified.
It is said that at the dawn of the Temple project, Msgr. Antonio Santin had a premonitory dream: he saw on a rocky spur a ship with its prow facing the sea with its sails unfurled to the wind.The ship is a symbol of the Church, but also of Mary of which she is the model, dawn and mother: always ready with her graces to accompany her maternally to the safest port. Eng. Guacci does not seem to have disregarded the prophetic vision of his client: the lower church, in fact, resembles the “hold” of a ship. The upper church, on the other hand, resembles the “deck” of a ship, where the main altar indicates the ” command bridge “: the” helmsman “Christ uniting her to himself with his spirit, pushes her towards the glory of the Father. The altar of Our Lady, on the other hand, in front of the altar of the Eucharist suggests the” route “of the ship : “Do what He tells you” (Jn 2,5).
The external facade of the building shows 3 large architectural dimensions: the pyramid to indicate the transcendence, the composition of the triangles to indicate its plurality and its monolithic structure to indicate its unity. In the composition of these 3 great symbols, the Temple, even from the outside, announces an ever-current message: “unity in plurality is reached when you look up, where you can see more of what unites rather than what divides”.
On the road in front of the gate of the Sanctuary there is a Via Crucis with the fourteen stations, the last of which is located within the perimeter of the sanctuary. Immersed in the pine forest and with a wonderful view of the sea, the sanctuary is a destination for individuals and groups of pilgrims looking for a quiet and relaxing place of prayer.
BARCOLA TRIESTE
Barcola, located at 14 meters above sea level, is the first inhabited nucleus you meet when arriving from the coast and the visiting card of the city of Trieste. Due to its extension in a hollow the Romans called it Vallicula, then the name contracted in Valcula and due to its mild climate it became a place of spas and rich Roman villas first and a district of the patrician villas of Trieste later on.
The breadth and position sheltered from the wind of the coast made it easy to dock ships and, as well described by the historians Ireneo della Croce in the seventeenth century and Pietro Kandler in the nineteenth century, the Romans built a very large pier between Barcola and Miramare , capable of accommodating no less than 60 minor woods. In place of the ancient Roman wharf, currently, the small port of Cedas opens, with smaller dimensions and the characteristic U-shape.
Behind the Giuliani house there was the Villa of the Prandi counts where on 2 September 1790 Ferdinand IV of Bourbon was hosted, the king of the Two Sicilies, who, traveling from Naples to Vienna, wanted to see “the fun of fishing in Barcola” where he went away. sea. The Prandi possessions were very extensive and reached the sea. Giacomo Prandi (1740-1822) dedicated himself to the wine trade and opened a fish processing plant in Barcola, accumulating great wealth. He built the villa in via San Michele, in the historic center of the city, bought the former Franciscan convent in Grignano which for decades was the family’s summer residence and built a large villa in Barcola which was then sold in 1914 to the “Barone Carlo Foundation. and Baroness Cecilia di Rittmeyer “for an asylum for poor blind people in Trieste.
Behind the church there is still the villa of the countess Regina Nugent. The house with the architectural style of a small castle bears the name of the owner engraved on the door jambs, while the gate is surmounted by a count’s crown and the date of erection 1881. Lavai Nugent, Earl of Westmeath, is buried in the Barcola cemetery. commander of the order of Maria Teresa, one of the heroes of the Austrian army of the Napoleonic era and very important for the liberation of these lands from the French, in fact, in 1813 he signed the surrender agreement of the French asseragliatisi in the castle of San Giusto. Margherita Nugent, Regina’s granddaughter, donated the Leo building and the adjacent former church of San Sebastiano in the historic center of Trieste to the Municipality of Trieste.
After the inauguration of the Trieste-Vienna railway line in July 1857, the imposing railway viaduct was built, which has twenty arches, 270 meters long, with a maximum height from the road surface of 21 m. of Viale Miramare. In the last decade of the nineteenth century many villas were built that transformed Barcola from an agricultural and fishing village into a resort capable of attracting international nobility such as the Venetian-style “Casa Mreule”,
and the “Jakic House” known as the Onion Villa which was built in 1896 by Anton Jakic, a former Dalmatian priest, although rumor has it that he was a spy for the Tsar. Sold by the owner in 1904, it became a popular dating and gambling house for a time.
The “Castelletto Cesare”, in neo-Gothic style, was commissioned by Alessandro Cesare di Salvore in 1890, after his family had obtained the concession of the beach and where,
subsequently, he had built the Excelsior bathhouse and the hotel of the same name currently transformed into private apartments. In June 1904 the headquarters of the new “Società Canottieri Nettuno” was inaugurated. Barcola underwent an important change between the 1950s and 1960s with the construction of the large Barcola Tourist Hotel, intended as a luxury residence for American officers during the Allied Military Government, and with the burial between the Rittmeyer Institute and the seafront, of a large stretch of sea on which the Pineta di Barcola was built in 1958
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The work of Duilio Cosma, at the time director of the Public Plantations of the Municipality of Trieste and founder of the Italian Association of Park and Garden Directors, was then bitterly contested by public opinion and today is one of the most loved places by Trieste. La Pineta is a green lung overlooking the gulf that, between maritime pines and holm oaks, leads from the small port of the same name to the Park and Miramare Castle.
Inside the pine forest in 1963 a large fountain called “luminous” was built due to the splashes of water of different colors.
The “Nuotatrice” is the bronze statue made by Ugo Carà in 1986 and placed near the fountain of Barcola in the pine forest overlooking the sea.
CIVIC MUSEUM OF ITALO SVEVO
Italo Svevo pseudonym of the writer Aron Hector Schmitz is considered one of the main exponents of Central European culture.
He was born in Trieste on December 19, 1861 into a family of the Jewish bourgeoisie. In his three novels Una vita (1893), Senilità (1898), and The conscience of Zeno (1923), the salient features of his work are expressed, derived in a compelling way from personal experiences such as the discovery of Freudian psychoanalysis and the cultural period where he lived.
In 1907 the meeting and friendship with his English teacher the Irish writer James Joyce awakened in him the confidence in his artistic abilities. When Italian critics ignored “Zeno’s Conscience” in 1923, Joyce, whose publication of “Ulysses” in 1922 had made him the voice of modernity, summoned Parisian critics to applaud Zeno. The fame and recognition of the value of his works came in the last years of Svevo’s life, broken on 13 September 1928 by the consequences of a road accident.
The civic museum of Italo Svevo was inaugurated on December 19 (the date of the day on which Svevo’s birthday is celebrated every year at the museum with an event) in 1997. The museum was born from the decision of Letizia Svevo Fonda Savio, daughter of the writer, to donate the precious patrimony of objects and papers to the Civic Library of Trieste, frequented by his father in his youth, and in which a “Swabian room” already existed. Unfortunately, most of the personal possessions, which belonged to the writer, and also the manuscripts of his three novels were destroyed during the air raid that hit the villa and factory of the Venetians, the family of Italo Svevo’s wife on February 20, 1945.
The few objects that have reached the museum, however, have had a great importance in the life of the writer and, in particular, the bookcase-cabinet characterized by the monogram with the intertwined initials engraved on the doors; the violin on which Svevo practiced for many years and with which he performed in a quartet during some private concerts and the gold pen that Livia, his wife, gave him on the occasion of their engagement.
