LA CASA DELLE BISSE -TRIESTE

Behind Piazza Sant’Antonio, in Via San Lazzaro 15 is Casa Allodi, known as the “Casa delle bisse” (House of snakes). It was built on a project by the architect Bubolini in 1771 in a neoclassical style with elements of French Rococo and over the years it has undergone numerous interventions that have transformed the original appearance conceived with only two floors while today it is presented with an additional floor and with the attic. Trieste says that the inscription: “Aedes anno MDCCLXXI ob aque inopiam aceto absoluta” which appears inside the house was placed to remind us that during the construction, in 1771, the city lacked water and the wells were dry, and the builder to avoid delaying the delivery, he bought a large quantity of vinegar to prepare the mortars.
“Hoc me ornament Galli affecerunt MDCCCIX” this is the writing that appears at the entrance. Trieste tells that the house was hit by a cannonball fired by the French during the battle with the Austrians who wanted to drive them out of the Trieste Castle and is still preserved in the entrance. In 1813, to commemorate the event, the owner of the house since 1793, the reverend Don Marco Sadnech, had an allegorical sculptural group placed on the main entrance portal.

The group depicts a snake, allegory of Napoleon I, attacked by three eagles, representing Austria, Russia and Prussia. From the architrave hangs a golden sphere, placed in memory of the cannonball.

CASTLE OF MIRAMARE – TRIESTE

The Castle stands on the Miramare promontory overlooking the sea near the bay of Grignano a few kilometers from the city. Maximilian of Habsburg-Lorraine, Archduke of Austria and Emperor of Mexico, in 1855.
It is said that Maximilian of Habsburg-Lorraine, Archduke of Austria and Emperor of Mexico, in 1855 following a storm, took refuge in the small port of Grignano and was fascinated by the promontory of Miramar, in Spanish “mirar el mar”. In memory of the castles that overlooked the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, the Archduke was inspired by the place for the construction of the Castle as his home
Trieste Massimiliano e Carlotta
of him and his wife Charlotte of Belgium and entrusted the project to the engineer Carl Junker. The works began on March 1, 1856 and ended in 1871 and the cost was around 600,000 florins. Miramare Castle was built in white Istrian stone in an eclectic style that combines neo-Gothic with medieval revival. The client and the architect were inspired by the current “romantisches Historismus”, developed in those years by Theophilus Hansen at the Arsenale of Vienna and the Pereira villa, just north of the imperial capital.
It is divided into two buildings connected to each other by a rear central body and a tower positioned in the area facing the sea. It is spread over two floors and a mezzanine and has battlements along the entire summit perimeter expressly desired by the Archduke. The castle overlooks, on one side, an open space decorated with flower beds and a fountain, while from the western wing, on the small port and finally, on the side opposite the entrance, it is surrounded by a terrace overlooking the sea.
Inside, the Castle was divided into numerous rooms. The ground floor was intended for the couple’s residence, while the upper floor was for guests and representatives. Franz and Julius Hofmann carried out the interior decoration.The ground floor works ended in 1860, when Massimiliano and Carlotta moved to the Castle, after their decay from the office of governor of Lombardy-Veneto, while the representative rooms were completed around 1870. In 1930, part of the representative floor was used as the residence of Duke Amedeo d’Aosta, who lived there for about seven years and modified some rooms according to the style of the time as well as replaced Imperial-Regie insignia with Savoy crosses.
The rooms of the Castle also preserve a valuable collection of oriental vases and retain all the original furnishings including ornaments, furniture and objects dating back to the mid-19th century.
The décor of the castle mostly follows the Biedermeier style but also Renaissance and Second Empire which implied a greater use of gold and the same decorations in the ceiling and floor.
Room XIX is decorated with a series of paintings by Cesare Dell’Acqua depicting the history of Miramare made with the collaboration of the historian Pietro Kandler from Trieste. On April 14, 1864, Massimiliano sailed with his wife to Mexico, aboard the Novara, the same ship that will bring his body back four years later.Before leaving I leave the testamentary dispositions in which the Castle was left to his dear Carlotta : “From what I have most dear, my Carlotta, I take leave with a heart full of gratitude. I feel the need to confess that I owe infinite happiness to her; since the smallest quarrel has never divided us, since she has always had meekness heartily for my mistakes and in all phases of our eventful life she had the truest and most faithful love that filled me with happiness ….. “No one knows better than her, what was dear to me in life and she will honor him; in particular, however, I recommend my dear Miramare and Lacroma, of which she already owns according to the deed of donation dated April 5, 1864. “

In Mexico he was crowned Emperor in 1864 and was shot in Querétaro in June 1866.

The Castillo de Chapultepec was the home of Maximilian and Charlotte in Mexico and has many architectural and natural features similar to Miramare Castle.

It is said that Carducci wanted to see the castle during one of his trips to Trieste, whence the unhappy Maximilian had left for the empire of Mexico. He entered the Archduke’s study room, built so that it resembled the cabin of the rear-flagship Novara which transported him to Mexico, he saw the portraits of Dante and Goethe at the place where Maximilian sat studying; he saw an ancient edition of Castilian romances open on the table; he saw more Latin sentences engraved in the main hall; these among others: Si fortuna iuvat caveto tolli – Si fortuna tonat caveto mergi – Saepe sub dulci melle venena latent – Non ad astra mollis and tenuis via – vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt. What impression that visit made on the poet is told by the ode, which immediately afterwards he thought of, and of which he immediately wrote these first stanzas. clouds “…
With the slender shape and the white of the karst marble silhouetted against the blue of the sea, the Castle is visible from all over the city and is one of the most visited castles in Italy.

PARK OF THE CASTLE OF MIRAMARE -TRIESTE

The Castle is surrounded by a large park of about 22 hectares.
Inside the park, Massimiliano built the small “Gartenhaus” also called Castelletto, as it recalls the exterior of the Miramare Castle. It overlooks the small port of Grignano and was inhabited by the spouses until their apartments inside the Castle were finished.

After Massimiliano’s death in the Castelletto under medical supervision, Carlotta retired showing the first signs of mental imbalance.

In addition to the Miramare Castle, Carl Junker also designed the Park and the work was entrusted in 1857 to the court gardener Josef Laube, subsequently replaced by the Bohemian Anton Jelinek. The Archduke himself defined which plants should be planted and brought 820 species of plants from nurseries and villas of Veneto,

subsequently numerous tree typologies arrived from the imperial greenhouses of Vienna of the Habsburg family, while the more exotic ones were imported following the circumnavigation of the globe with the frigate Novara.

In the park there are sculptures from the Berlin school Moritz Geiss, the greenhouses, the Swan lake, the cannons donated by Leopoldo I, king of the Belgians and the chapel of San Canciano.

Like a silent sentinel, a Ptolemaic sphinx dating back to the 2nd century BC. C., carved in pink granite, is located at the top of the quay of the Castle’s harbor. It is a precious artefact belonging to the Egyptian collection brought together by Maximilian thanks to the scientific advice of Egyptologist Simon Reinisch, and now preserved in Vienna at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

MUSEUM OF ORIENTAL ART – TRIESTE

At the beginning of Cavana, the Museum of Oriental Art is housed in a historic 18th century building, the Palazzetto Leo, which dates back to 1747 and built by the architect Giovanni Fusconi.
The Leos had settled in Trieste in 1155 and in the 1600s they became barons of the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1772 and 1773 it hosted Giacomo Casanova. Pietro Leo de Loewensberg died in 1814 and the family became extinct. At the beginning of the 20th century, Count Laval Nugent, heir to Baron de Zanchi, already owner of the second and third floors, bought the whole building and in 1954 it was donated to the Municipality of Trieste.
The Museum of Oriental Art was inaugurated on March 8, 2001 and houses collections of oriental art, travel memories, weapons, musical instruments and various kinds of artifacts from all over the Asian area, in particular the story of relations between Trieste and the East through the Suez Canal started in the 18th century, the interesting nucleus of Gandhara sculptures, embroidered Chinese silk fabrics,
porcelain from the Song period,

sculptures and objects related to Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism,
Japanese porcelain, collection of Ukiyo-e prints, works by great masters of Japanese art including Hiroshige and Hokusai with the famous Wave.

MORPURGO MUSEUM – TRIESTE

It is the apartment of a rich family of the Trieste entrepreneurial bourgeoisie of the 1800s who collected works of art and precious furnishings with refined taste.
The house represents a wonderful example of the princely style and opulence that characterized the families of the Trieste upper middle class.
In 1870 the sisters Emma and Fanny Mondolfo, married to the Morpurgo brothers, bought the building with number 839, now via Imbriani 5, and the adjacent one number 840, now via Mazzini 42. These ancient buildings were demolished, in 1875 the architect Giovanni Berlam designed a palace of elegant and sober neo-Renaissance forms. Giacomo and Fanny Morpurgo with their children Mario and Matilde,
in 1878, went to occupy the apartment located on the entire second floor, while Carlo Marco and Emma Morpurgo chose the one corresponding to the first floor
On Emma’s death the house passed entirely to her sister, who in 1938 made a deed of donation in favor of the children. Upon their death, both left their respective properties to the Municipality of Trieste. Mario Morpurgo in his will, drawn up in 1941, assigned the Municipality of Trieste as the heir of all its substance, in addition to the art collections, all the furniture and furnishings and all his assets were destined to create an intangible fund with the name Mario Morpurgo de Nilma. The still existing foundation aims to help needy people, with preference for those who have fallen, born and resident in Trieste.
The apartment on the second floor, with its furniture almost intact, became the Morpurgo Civic Museum and the one on the first floor was in 1950 used as a Museum of the Risorgimento and that of the History of the Homeland. A precious collection of eighteenth-century majolica,
vases from Savona, majolica from Faenza and Castelli l’Abruzzo, Japanese tableware, Bohemian glass and complete table sets in French Pillivuit porcelain with monogram, woodcuts and engravings by great artists such as Jacques Callot, Gérard Edelink, Pierre Drevet, Giandomenico Tiepolo, Francesco Bartolozzi, Jean Balvay, Max Klinger and Félix Vallotton and the gallery of sixty pictures, drawings and paintings
among these the oldest ones executed by artists from Luca Giordano’s circle, make the visit an experience unique life of a bourgeois family of the 1800s

PALAZZO TERGESTEO -TRIESTE

Palazzo Tergesteo is a few steps from Piazza Borsa and Piazza Unità. Palazzo Tergesteo was built on the site of the Dogana Vecchia on the initiative of a group of shareholders, the “Società del Tergesteo”.
It was built in just two years on a project by the architect Francesco Bruyne and inaugurated on the evening of August 24, 1842. It cost about two million Austrian lire and was one of the last palaces in Trieste built in the neoclassical style. The building is spread over four floors above ground in addition to the ground floor and mezzanine and consists of four buildings separated by a gallery, located on the ground floor,
in the shape of a Greek cross and inspired by the Galleria de Cristoforis in Milan, covered gabled with metal frame.
The entrances to the building are located on the four sides of the building: there are four entrances to the gallery, two mirrored places, one main on Piazza della Borsa, and one on Piazza Verdi, and two others on via del Teatro and via Einaudi.

The two marble sculptural groups that dominate the main facades were added later. The one on the facade facing Piazza della Borsa, by Pietro Zandomeneghi, depicts the goddess of the sea Tethys, standing on a shell pulled by four horses and holding a baby in her arms and on the right Mercury, god of commerce. The sculpture represents the city of Trieste driven by the fortunes that come from the sea, but also from trade and the nascent industry.
The second sculptural group on the rear facade towards the Verdi Theater, by Antonio Bianchi, represents Neptune and Mercury with allegories of geography and history.
Il palazzo fu sede della Borsa triestina dal 1844 al 1928 e del Lloyd Austriaco dal 1857 al 1883 e divenne il luogo più rappresentativo di commercio e di ritrovo della Trieste ottocentesca.
Many famous people frequent the Tergesteo including the Trieste writer Italo Svevo, who used the gallery as a background for his novel, “Zeno’s Consciousness”.
During the Second World War and the years of the occupation the Palace suffered numerous damages and in 1957 the architect Alessandro Psacaropulo intervened on the gallery, replacing the original sloping roof with a glass-concrete structure. In 2009, careful restoration work brought the Tergesteo Palace back to the splendor of the Habsburg era and the heart of the intervention was the reconstruction of the Gallery in its original nineteenth-century version.
Inside the Gallery, an original wall clock, not working, marks the time and day when the deed of incorporation of the Tergesteo Joint-Stock Company was signed and from 1863.
Towards Piazza Verdi there was Caffè Tergesteo, one of the historic cafes of Trieste, characterized by stained glass windows depicting episodes from Trieste’s history, a meeting place for the cultural elite of the time and also very popular with the Trieste poet Umberto Saba. “Caffè Tergesteo … you reconcile the Italian and the Slavic, late at night, along your billiard table”.

REVOLTELLA MUSEUM -TRIESTE

The Revoltella Museum is located in a Neo-Renaissance building from 1858 and overlooks Piazza Venezia. It includes the private apartment of Baron Revoltella, owner of the palace of the same name, and the Brunner Palace which houses the Gallery of Modern Art on the third floor.
Pasquale Revoltella was born in Venice in 1795 and moved, as a child, with his family to Trieste. He became an important figure in the political and above all economic life of the city and contributed to the opening of the Suez Canal.He died unmarried in 1869 and donated with his will the Palazzo Revoltella with the Museum and the Chalet with the Revoltella Park, in the Ferdinandeo area. to the city of Trieste.
He died unmarried in 1869 and donated the Palazzo Revoltella with the Museum and the Chalet with the Revoltella Park, in the Ferdinandeo area, to the city of Trieste.
Each room of his private apartment, inside Palazzo Revoltella, was cared for in the smallest decorative and ornamental details.
Passionate about art and the taste for beauty, the baron enriched every room of the palace with works of art.
The dining room, the green living room, the blue living room, the yellow living room, the ballroom, the domed room and many other rooms each had distinct functions of representation and art.
The sculptural work “the Fountain of the Aurisina Nymph” (1858) by Pietro Magni welcomes visitors to Palazzo Revoltella and represents the construction of the second aqueduct in Trieste, a true technological jewel.
On the first floor “The cutting of the isthmus of Suez” (1863) by Pietro Magni, represents Europe that holds together, shaking hands, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
In addition to the works of the baron, the Municipality acquired numerous other works, paid for with the donations that Revoltella himself had made to the city. The works on display today are about 350 between paintings and sculptures.
Palazzo Brunner houses the works of Italian authors of the second half of the nineteenth century (third floor), the works acquired in the first decades of the twentieth century (fourth floor), the works of artists from Friuli-Venezia-Giulia (fifth floor) and national ( sixth) of the second half of the twentieth century.
The works on display are, among others, by artists such as Giovanni Fattori, Domenico Induno, Giuseppe de Nittis, Ignacio Zuloaga, Mario Sironi, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Manlio Rho, Mario De Luigi, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Giacomo Manzù , Francesco Hayez, Alice Pscaropulo.

MUSEO SARTORIO – DIMORA STORICA -TRIESTE

Villa Sartorio, an elegant bourgeois villa located a short distance from the sea and surrounded by a large garden, was built in the 1700s and modified and enlarged in the neoclassical era.the owner Pietro Sartorio, who arrived in Trieste from his native Sanremo in 1775, as a merchant of grains, became part of the Triestine aristocracy, starting a thriving commercial activity, which was then successfully taken over by his sons Giovanni Guglielmo and Pietro.
The latter marries the rich and cultured Giuseppina Fontana and with her becomes the owner of this villa, which he furnishes with valuable furniture and paintings, still on display. He passed on his taste for art to his children, in particular to Giuseppe who became an attentive and competent collector, to whom we owe the rare collection of 254 drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo, one of the most important in the world.

The library, divided into three rooms, exhibits the nineteenth-century bookcases that preserve about six thousand volumes of American literature of the eighteenth-nineteenth century and classical literature, among them a rare section of eighteenth-century Masonic works. At the center of the second library you can admire the two terrestrial and celestial globes by Wilhelm Janszoon Blaeu, dated around 1600, the official cosmographer of the Dutch States General. The exhibition room preserves the Venetian terrazzo floor intact, a couple of small bookcases and a valuable inlaid 18th century chest of drawers.

The rooms are full of paintings, paintings and drawings that have as their subject views of Italian and European cities, markets and architecture of nineteenth-century Venice.
At the ancient stables of Villa Sartorio there is the plaster cast-glyptotheque of the Civic Museums of History and Art, set up in a dedicated space of 130 square meters. A rich sculptural collection: more than 500 pieces, from the late nineteenth century to today, and the oldest examples in the collection are four casts of works by Antonio Canova, made by the artist himself.

In the basement you can visit a beautiful section dedicated to ceramics, about two hundred and fifty pieces, which covers a very long period of time, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The tableware on display comes from the most important Italian manufacturers and ends with examples of English production and seventy notable examples of Trieste ceramics from the last three decades of the eighteenth century.

Villa Sartorio became a “house museum” in 1947 thanks to the bequest of Anna Segrè Sartorio. Inside the furnishings, works of art and everyday objects coexist styles: Empire as the central hall dedicated to receptions and dances and adorned with consoles and mirrors or the music room with the piano and a series of Empire furniture including an elegant dormeuse or the Bedroom of the Duke (in 1919 it hosted Emanuele Filiberto Duca D’Aosta) with a gallery of valuable 17th-18th century paintings of sacred subjects; Neorococò the pink living room furnished with furniture inlaid with floral motifs;

Biedermeier, like the dining room with the table set and, on the sideboard-plate, the precious Meissen porcelain service, a gift from the King of Saxony Frederick Augustus II; Neo-Gothic like the Gothic Hall with its uniform decoration from floor to ceiling to furniture and reflects the adherence to the fashion of the recovery of historical styles that spread in the mid-19th century.

In a particular room there is the precious Triptych of Santa Chiara, an exceptional testimony of Venetian painting of the first half of the fourteenth century, a work of art executed in tempera on wood. Panels depict on a gold background episodes from the life of Christ, the death of Santa Chiara and the stigmata of San Francesco. With the triptych closed, St. Christopher is depicted on the left wing, and St. Sergius on the right, with the Trieste halberd in his hand.

The park was built in 1807 by Pietro Sartorio who made the area look like a Venetian garden with a portal, a monumental staircase, some statues and a gloriette that was used as a pavilion for music. The statues that adorn the garden today represent one of the very few examples of early eighteenth-century outdoor sculpture in Trieste.

OLD DUINO CASTLE – TRIESTE

The ruins of the Old Castle that rise on the rocks at sea level and the first historical references of the old manor are by Pliny the Elder who mentions the original building, named Castellum Pucinum, built on the rugged promontory between Monfalcone and Trieste, where previously – according to tradition – there was a place of druidic worship dedicated to the Sun God. The first fortified nucleus that gave shape and life to the village was built in the 11th century.

Testimony is given by the oldest written document that deals with the fortress of Duino dated 1139, the period in which the dominion of the Tybein de Dewino (or Tybeiner) vassals of the patriarchs of Aquileia began. The place was then also called Tybein. The fiefdom was made immune to attacks by the high crenellated walls and by the view that allowed control over the arrival of enemy ships.

The fortress could be accessed by a single impervious and fortified path along the surrounding wall. The tower consisted of different floors. From the remains found, such as a lectern set in the wall near a pointed window and from the frescoes left on the lower floor, it was assumed that the latter was used as a chapel, while the upper ones served for a long time as a prison. A drawbridge was located where today the entrance to the fortress is located.

The legend of the “white lady” inspired by a white rock that, seen from the sea, looks like a female figure wrapped in a veil is linked to the old Castle of Duino. It is said that once the castle was inhabited by an evil knight who annoyed by he generous and kind heart of his wife named Esterina da Portole devised a plan to kill her. One night he drew her onto a tight set around the castle walls and threw her into the sea. The distraught and terrified woman let out a muffled scream and was petrified. It is said that from that day during the night the lady detaches herself from the rock and wanders in the castle, crossing all the rooms to the room where her child slept and remains there until dawn and then returns to the rock where her pain transforms her. back to stone.

Another legend tells that Antonia, a sweet girl who fell in love with a man who seemed a benefactor but who was actually a ruthless and cruel murderer, Giovanni Sbogar, was imprisoned in the basement of the Old Castle. Unfortunately when she found out she had been robbed and attacked by her henchmen, she went mad with grief and locked herself in a convent.

Triester tells that Dante Alighieri stayed at the Castelvecchio di Duino during the period of his exile and that some verses of the Divine Comedy were written by the poet just observing the panorama of Duino from a rock that is located between the old and new castle and for this reason reason is said: Dante’s rock. 

DUINO CASTLE – TRIESTE

Duino Castle is located in the municipality of Duino-Aurisina, a few kilometers from Trieste. In 1389, to replace the Castelvecchio dating back to the 10th century still visible on the spur of the rock overlooking the sea, Ugone di Duino, captain of Trieste, ordered the construction of a Castle which was built on the ruins of a Roman outpost incorporating a tower of the 16th century.

Owned for over 420 years by the Della Torre di Valsassina family first and then by the princes della Torre and Tasso, the history of the family is linked to the management of postal services which was exercised by the family, from 1400 onwards, for more than 350 years. in several European countries, including Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands.

The Castle during the First World War suffered extensive damage and was largely rebuilt. Since 1600, many important personalities both in the political and artistic worlds have been hosted in the castle of the princes including: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Franz Listz, Paul Valery, the empress Sissi and the archduke Francesco Ferdinando.

The Prague poet Reiner Maria Rilke, in a period of his life, was a guest of Princess Maria della Torre and Tasso to whom he dedicated the “Duino Elegies” that had been conceived and started during the long walks that the poet used to take around the Castle . In homage to the poet it was inaugurated in 1987 ”

The Rilke path “, a 2-kilometer panoramic walk at the edge of the karst ridge overlooking the sea that connects the towns of Duino and Sistiana. During the route there are some war posts open to the sea. From the manor you can enjoy a wonderful view on the steep rocky walls overlooking the sea.

The Castle has a magnificent park with 21,000 flowers in regular rotation. romantic avenues full of statues and archaeological finds,

and from the wonderful terraces and from the terraces you can enjoy a wonderful view of the sea.

The Castle during the First World War suffered extensive damage and was largely rebuilt. Under the park of the Castle, at a depth of 18 meters, there is a bunker built during the Second World War in the rock. Today it can be visited and has been transformed into a mini-museum with period relics exhibited in a large room of 400 square meters.