Facts about Trieste
Trieste is a city and port in northeastern Italy that is very near the Slovenian border, to the North, East and South. Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. It is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trieste province. As of 2007, the population of Trieste is 208,614. Trieste flourished as part of Austria, from 1382 until 1918 when it was among Central Europe's most prosperous Mediterranean seaports as well as a capital of literature and music. Today, Trieste is a border town. Places of tourist interest in Trieste include numerous examples of Art Nouveau and neoclassical architecture from its Austrian past and Trieste University. The area of what is now Trieste was settled by the Carni, an Indo-European tribe in the 3rd millennium BC. The area of Trieste was later populated by the Histri, an Illyrian people, who remained the main civilization until the 2000 BC, when the Palaeo-Veneti arrived. By 177 BC, the city was under the governance of the Roman republic. Trieste was granted the status of a colony under Julius Caesar, who recorded its name as Tergeste in his Commentarii de bello Gallico (51 BC). After the end of the Western Roman Empire (in 476), Trieste remained a Byzantine military centre. In 788 it became part of the Frank kingdom, under the authority of their count-bishop. From the year 1081 the city came loosely under Aquileia's patriarchy, developing into a free commune at the end of the 12th century. After two centuries of war against the nearby major power, the Republic of Venice (who occupied it briefly from 1369 to 1372), the burghers of Trieste petitioned Leopold III von Habsburg, Duke of Austria to become part of his domains. The city was occupied by French troops three times during the Napoleonic Wars, in 1797, 1805 and 1809. In 1947, Trieste was declared an independent state as the Free Territory of Trieste split in two zones: A and B. Zone A was governed for several years by the Allied Military Government, comprising American and (mainly) British forces headed by Sir Terence Airey; the southern part of the territory, Zone B comprised what was not yet annexed by Jugoslavia of Istria, roughly the coastline from Muggia to Capodistria/Koper. This state was de facto dissolved in 1954: the city of Trieste, dubbed Zone A, went to Italy, while the southern part of the territory (Zone B) went to Yugoslavia with some villages around Muggia formerly included in Zone A. The annexation to Italy was officially proclaimed on October 26 of that year. The Castle of Marimare was built from 1856 to 1860 in Trieste to a design by Carl Junker on the orders of Archduke Maximilian. Mathilde Bonaparte, Napoleon's niece, daughter of his brother Jerome Bonaparte was born in Trieste in 1820 and died in the early 20th century. Ludwig Boltzmann, the famous Austrian physicist was born in Trieste. The first men to reach the very deepest point in the oceans (the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench), used a special bathyscaphe named Trieste in 1960. The city was honored with a reference to a starship named the Trieste in the Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode "11001001". The ship was stationed sixty-six hours away from Starbase 74 during the Bynar supernova incident. The starship name was related to the special minisub (bathyscaphe Trieste) of Jacques Piccard that touched in 1960 the bottom of the Pacific ocean, "boldly reaching" new frontiers for humankind. Listed as a location for filming of the popular Francis Ford Coppola movie, The Godfather: Part II (released December 1974). |
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