August 28, 2017

Trieste is famous for its cold, gale-force Bora wind, and indeed, all manner of creatures and people have blown through the seaside city in Italy’s far northeast, next to the Slovenian border. Dinosaurs and Neanderthals once roamed the limestone hills of the Karst region, and legend holds that Jason and the Argonauts sailed in with the Golden Fleece. Empires breezed in, too, notably the Roman and the Byzantine. But it was centuries of Austrian rule that left the most enduring mark. The House of Hapsburg built much of Trieste’s regal core and left a permanent mark on its gastronomy — evinced by the beer, sauerkraut and strudel on many restaurant menus. 

April 28, 2011

A MEDIUM-SIZE seaport teetering on the edge of what we recognize as Italy, Trieste is a mysterious and puzzling place. Its iconic central square, the Piazza dell’Unità d’Italia, bounded on three sides by comically pompous 18th- and 19th-century buildings, most of them decorated like big, boxy wedding cakes, is wide open to the Adriatic, as though the ever-changing seascape were an entertainment staged for the city’s benefit. This vast, glorious piazza promises all sorts of civic delights, but in fact it’s one of the few immediately gratifying spots in Trieste. The rest takes time — exactly what most of us are unwilling to give up.

March 24, 2011

One morning, about a century ago, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke was visiting his friend, Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, in her seaside castle at Duino, just west of Trieste. He was 36, broke, blocked, disconsolate and sickly, a saturnine man contemplating his fears and failures. Perhaps the princess had business elsewhere; perhaps she understood a poet’s need for solitude; perhaps he was merely bad company. In any case, she left the castle, while Rilke remained, watched over by a staff who must have found him odd, at best. It was January, and Trieste’s furious Bora wind was blowing; nevertheless, he liked to walk along the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic. On one such occasion, he was brooding about money, as writers will, when his thoughts were interrupted by a voice emerging from the gale: “Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions of Angels?”

May 19, 2007

And when you find yourself visiting Trieste, almost all anyone will talk about is the coffee. Well, let me steer you otherwise, straight to Buffet da Pepi. Pepi is not unlike the now nearly extinct New York kosher deli, with one major exception: its featured meat is pork, not beef. But the meats are cured similarly, and they're served with sauerkraut and good, hot mustard. The crowning touch is the freshly grated horseradish, or kren, as it's called here, which is served all over town on many different dishes. Nowhere does it dominate or show its glory more than it does here.

May 12, 2001

From across the Caffè San Marco, the most splendid and theatrically Old World of Trieste's historic coffeehouses, I find myself unable to stop staring at the elderly man who, like certain figures you see when you are traveling, seems conjured up, by magic, to enhance the ambience of a place. Perhaps it's just the setting -- the glossy, dark wood paneling, the golden walls, the marble-topped tables, the paintings of masked revelers, the uniquely Triestian mix of Vienna and Venice -- but it's easy to imagine that the elegant coffee drinker has been at that same table with his newspaper for the century or so since the cafe was founded.