![]() A tiny percentage even argues to bring back the free independent Trieste. Some people even act nostalgic for Austria, people who were never even Austrian in the first place. You meet Slovenes convinced Trieste belongs to them. You meet Slavs whose mother tongue is Italian. You meet Italian nationals with Germanic surnames and vice-versa. The geographic borders make no sense to anyone. When Yugoslavia dissolved decades later, that second zone was subsequently split up again, with portions going to Slovenia and Croatia.Īs a result, the majority of Trieste residents these days are native Italian speakers, but in a place where Italian, Germanic and Slavic influence and language all bleed into each other. Then in 1954 those two zones were split, with the northern zone returning to Italy, resulting in the present-day city of Trieste, but with the surrounding area, the coastal lands and the frontiers all going to Tito. Following the Second World War, Trieste became a free independent territory administered in two different zones, one under American and British control, the other operated by Yugoslavia. During the Second World War, the Nazis occupied Trieste for a few years and then Tito’s Partisans took over for forty days. After the First World War, Trieste officially became part of Italy. Triesticity.Īustria-Hungary controlled Trieste for a few hundred years, that is, before the 20th century and the era of zoological nationalism then reconfigured the area multiple times, taking the city through numerous flags and border changes. ![]() There is no other place on earth where the aforementioned dynamics would unfold. And being Orthodox, he’s friends with the Serb Orthodox community, many of whom were refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Members of the synagogue have found refuge in San Marco ever since.ĭelithanassis is Greek Orthodox, but since his daughter attends the Jewish school of Trieste, which is now open to anyone, he regularly hangs out with the Jewish community. Caffè San Marco opened in January of 1914, when Trieste was still the main seaport of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The French rabbi from the historic synagogue next door, Alexander Meloni, is smoking Marlboro Golds. The Greek-Italian proprietor, Alex Delithanassis, is smoking a Chesterfield. In Trieste, Italy, at the northern fringe of the Adriatic Sea, I am experiencing what Jan Morris called “Triesticity.” Outside Caffè San Marco, we sit at a square table on a pedestrian street, Via Donizetti, that runs alongside the cafe.
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