literary itineraries

Hello, and Welcome! Yes, the city is a bit unusual.
But it offers such a wealth of beauty and marvels that you are sure to fall in love with it.

In addition to being the city of the Barcolana, science and coffee, did you know that Trieste is also, for example, one of the - unrecognized - world literary capitals? What other city of this size (which at the height of its glory had just over 200,000 residents) can boast of being one of the most important centres for the evolution of Modernist literature? And of continuing to produce, through its writers, art and literary culture beloved around the world?

It was the cradle of Svevo and Saba, Joyce's procuress, Richard Francis Burton's "favourite retreat" and the consular office of Charles Lever, Stendhal and Ivo Andrić.

It was godmother to the works of Vladimir Bartol, Srečko Kosovel, Fulvio Tomizza and many other important writers and poets who wrote in Italian, Slovenian, German and other languages.
Even today, at least ten leading national and international writers work in Trieste, including Nobel Prize candidates like Boris Pahor and Claudio Magris.

 

But let's continue. Here, on the left in just a moment we will come to what Joyce, in a letter to his friend Italo Svevo, called "The canal that comes from afar to join the great Antonio Taumaturgo [the Neoclassical church that you see there in the background], and then changes its mind and goes back as it came".

But first, keeping to the side of the road away from the sea (which shimmers farther ahead, on the right), we come to the first building in the city owned by Generali, the important insurance company. Franz Kafka, who had just been hired by the Prague branch of the company, is thought to have sought a post here in 1907. Instead, somewhat ironically, that same year one of his colleagues who was also destined to make a name for himself in the literary world was sent to Trieste - Leo Perutz. It was also here that, many years later, Biagio Marin (the poet from Grado) worked as a librarian.

In Trieste, culture and business are tightly bound in a knot that is impossible to untie. See that beautiful building just past the canal, the one with the lovely dome and statues? It was the residence and warehouse of one of the wealthiest merchants of the Trieste marketplace, a Greek named Demetrio Carciotti. This fact, however, does not prevent the building from being one of the most stunning examples of Neoclassical architecture in a city that has been said to be entirely Neoclassical, perhaps as an apology for the death in 1768 of the father of Neoclassicism, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, killed by a young man armed with a knife.

 

Now we make a quick right turn, passing in front of the workplace home of Saba's friend, the extraordinary intellectual Anita Pittoni, the companion of Giani Stuparich and soul of the "Lo Zibaldone" publishing house, as we cross Borsa Square.

The majestic, recently restored building on the right past the portico of the Borsa building is the Tergesteo, the setting of many of the scenes of merchant life in Svevo's novels. More importantly, it was the headquarters of Banca Union, the institute where Ettore Schmitz (Italo Svevo) worked for almost twenty years, leaving an unforgettable description of it in his first novel Una Vita (A Life).

And if we cross the square here, perhaps taking advantage of the underpass known as the "Portizza", we arrive in the Jewish ghetto, which Saba described in vivid detail in the Gli Ebrei (The Jews) section of his Ricordi - Racconti (Memories and Stories) and which Svevo visited as a child to attend synagogue.