Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sights
Most of Trieste's sights are within walking distance of the city's centre, the vast Piazza
dell'Unità d'Italia, or can be accessed by Trieste's efficient bus network.
Castello di Miramare
( 0412 77 04 70;
www.castello-miramare.it
;
adult/reduced €4/2; 9am-7pm summer, to 4pm winter)
Sitting on a rocky outcrop 7km from the centre, Castello di Miramare is Trieste's elegiac
bookend, the fanciful neo-Gothic home of the hapless Archduke Maximilian of Austria.
Maximilian came to Trieste in the 1850s as the commander-in-chief of Austria's imper-
ial navy, an ambitious young aristocrat known for his liberal ideas. After chancing upon
Miramare's site while sailing, he decided to build a home there. In 1864, while work was
still in progress, he was talked into taking up the obsolete crown of Mexico, but after
Benito Juárez reestablished republican rule in 1867, Maximilian was shot by a firing
squad. His wife, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, was so stricken with grief that she spent
the rest of her life believing Maximilian was still alive, and only briefly returned to live at
Miramare.
The house has remained essentially as she left it, a reflection of Maximilian's eccentric
wanderlust along with the various obsessions of the imperial age: a bedroom is modelled
to look like a frigate's cabin, there's ornate orientalist salons and a red silk-lined throne
room. Upstairs, a suite of rooms used by the Anglophile military hero Duke Amadeo of
Aosta in the 1930s is also intact, furnished in the Italian Rationalist style. Amadeo proved
as ill-fated as Maximilian: appointed viceroy of Ethiopia in 1937, he was to die five years
later in a British POW camp in Kenya.
Maximilian was a keen botanist and the castle is set in 22 hectares of
gardens
(
8am-7pm summer, to sunset winter)
, which burst with the colour and scent of rare and exotic
trees.
HISTORIC BUILDING
Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia
This vast public domain - said to be the biggest square opening onto a waterfront in Italy
- is an elegant triumph of Austro-Hungarian town planning and contemporary civil pride.
Pristine but peopled, it's not only a good place for a drink or a chat, but it's also perfect
for a quiet moment staring out at ships on the horizon.
PIAZZA
