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.