Explore Trieste

Piazza Unità d'Italia is the main square of Trieste, a rectangle of about 12,000 square metres that opens onto the Adriatic at the foot of San Giusto hill. It is lined by the town hall, the seat of the regional government and the prefecture, mostly built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the 18th-century Fountain of the Four Continents stands in front of the town hall.

The Canal Grande is a navigable canal in Trieste's Borgo Teresiano, dug in 1754–1756 by the Venetian Matteo Pirona so that ships could load and unload in the town centre. Palaces and the Serbian Orthodox church line its quays, and the Ponte Rosso crosses it midway, with a statue of James Joyce. The inland end was filled in in 1934.

Saint Spyridon is the Serbian Orthodox church of Trieste, beside the Canal Grande. The present building, designed by Carlo Maciachini, was built from 1861 to 1868 on the site of an 18th-century church, using marble from Carrara, Verona, the Karst and Istria. Blue domes crown it, mosaics of saints decorate its facades, and the church holds icons and treasures from 1751 on.

The Arco di Riccardo is a Roman arch in the old town of Trieste, built around 33–32 BC as a gate in the city walls and the only part of those walls still standing. The 7.2-metre arch is partly set into later houses. Its name is popularly linked to Richard the Lionheart, but more likely comes from 'Arco del Cardo', after the Roman street.

Trieste Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Justus, stands on San Giusto hill on the remains of a Roman propylaeum. It took its present form in the 14th century, when two older churches were joined under one roof behind a facade with a large rose window. Inside are apse mosaics from the 12th and 13th centuries, and remains of the Roman propylaeum can be seen inside the bell tower.

The Synagogue of Trieste is the city's main synagogue, built in 1908–1912 to designs by the architects Ruggero and Arduino Berlam. It replaced four smaller prayer rooms dating from the 18th century. The stone building, with a large rose window and domes, still serves the Jewish community and can be seen on guided tours.

Caffè San Marco is a coffeehouse in Trieste, opened in 1914 on the ground floor of a building in Via Cesare Battisti. Its Secession-style rooms keep marble tables, brass chandeliers and a ceiling painted with coffee leaves. Writers such as Italo Svevo and James Joyce are associated with it, and it also has a bookshop and a restaurant.

The Risiera di San Sabba is a former rice-husking plant in Trieste that the German occupiers used from 1943 to 1945 as a police detention camp, the only camp in Italy with a crematorium. Prisoners were killed here or deported, many of them to Auschwitz. Declared a national monument in 1965, it now holds a memorial and a museum.

Miramare Castle is a 19th-century residence on a rocky promontory above the Gulf of Trieste, built from 1856 to 1860 to designs by Carl Junker for Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria, later Emperor of Mexico. Its rooms keep their original furnishings, and it stands in a 22-hectare park the archduke laid out with plants from around the world.