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.
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
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.