Trieste, birthplace of Joyce’s Ulysses
Thirty-five years after landing with a bang in the Italian city James Meehan is back in his namesake’s old stomping ground
The old Whitstable town coach was bouncing its way through the Italian countryside with a group of us making a very belated assault on the old hippie route to Kathmandu. A sudden bang and we coasted to a halt somewhere outside Trieste. Waiting for the problem to be sorted, a few brave souls jumped on the tram and headed into the city. Pre-Google and interweb we had very little knowledge about the city except that James Joyce had something to do with it. The tram dropped us in Piazza Oberdan and we wandered around the city. Trieste was stunning in the autumn sunlight, with people enjoying the Indian summer, sitting outside its great cafés watching the world go by. Memories of that accidental afternoon in Trieste have stayed with me and I promised I’d return. Thirty-five years later I have kept that promise.
Trieste is located on the north eastern corner of the Adriatic sea, only a few kilometres from Slovenia. Down the centuries Trieste has been Roman, Venetian, Slav, Austro-Hungarian and Italian, to name but some, and all of these influences are visible in the city. For centuries it was a major city and port of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and it was into Trieste that the remains of Archduke Franz Ferdinand were brought after his assassination in Sarajevo.
James Joyce and Nora Barnacle arrived in Trieste in October 1904, only months after meeting, and set up their first home near the Ponte Rosso, where a statue of Joyce now stands looking over the Grand Canal. In Trieste, Joyce completed Dubliners and wrote
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. He taught English at the Berlitz school and even briefly considered a career as an opera singer. They lived in Trieste for a decade and left for Zurich in 1915 during the First World War. Returning in 1919 they didn’t seem to like the new Italian administration and, in 1920, left Trieste for good, moving to Paris.
There is a small museum to Joyce on Via Madonna del Mare, which is worth a visit. It is jointly dedicated to Joyce and his great friend and fellow author Italo Svevo, who it is said, was the inspiration for Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom. Ulysses may have been written and pub- lished in Paris but it was a product of Trieste. Locating the museum is a great introduction to the old city and the labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys that weave their way up the hill to Castle San Giusto. The area is peppered with shops, restaurants, bars and cafes.
Joyce was a regular at the café Il Trionfo, now the Arcoriccardo, the trattoria near the Roman arch at Piazza Barbacan where he was partial to the famous Dalmatian wine Opollo di Lissa. As you make your way down the hill towards the sea you enter the Hapsburg-inspired centre of the city. The Piazza Unita d’Italia is one of the most spectacular piazzas anywhere in Europe, and it is said to be the biggest. On three sides the piazza is surrounded by the grand municipal buildings and palaces of the city with the Fontana dei Quattro Continenti at the top. The fourth side of the square is open to the Adriatic with the Molo Audace, a long pier, that Triestini love to walk. The first time you enter the Piazza do it from the sea end to get the full impact of this magnificent square.
Evenings are a favourite time to visit the Piazza as it faces west and the sunsets on the Adriatic are beautiful. A two-minute walk away is the Grand Canal. Constructed in the mid-18th. century, a series of canals were planned to drain salt marshes and allow easy access to the city for loading and unloading cargo.
Only the Grand Canal was built and it is one of the landmarks of the city. With the church of Sant’Antonio Taumaturgo at the top, the Grand Canal is lined with cafés and bars where Triestini enjoy their evening aperitivo before heading for dinner. A few hundred metres along the seafront from the Molo Audace it is possible to get a ferry across the bay to Muggia, an old fortified village or castelliere, the only Italian port in Istria, right on the Slovenian border. The ferry trip is about 20 minutes and costs €8 return.
Muggia dates from the Roman era and was part of the Venetian Republic of which there are many traces – the Venetian style houses, main square and the coats of arms on the building facades.
Right on the old harbour there is a fantastic restaurant that serves some of the best seafood you will get anywhere, Trattoria Risorta. Sit out on the terrace overlooking the sea and enjoy a nice long lunch, afterwards there are plenty of ferries to get you back to the city.
An important part of the culture of Trieste is to bathe or swim in the sea. Near the city centre on Lantern Pier is El Pedocin a popular public bathing facility. It is divided by a wall, with men on one side and women and children on the other. Despite many efforts by the city to
WRITTEN IN PARIS BUT ULYSSES WAS A PRODUCT OF TRIESTE
remove the wall, locals have refused and want it kept the way it is. If you prefer to get out of the city to have a swim, spend €4.35 and get a day pass for the public bus. The No.6 will bring you to Barcola where there are numerous bathing locations as well as cafés and restaurants
If, like me, swimming isn’t your thing then jump on the 44 bus at Piazza Oberdan and head up onto the Karst, the 350m high limestone plateau that hugs the city. The bus passes through villages and towns, dropping off grannies with their shopping, children to school and people to work. On the route are the picturesque harbour towns of Sistiana and Duino, nestled into the base of the limestone cliffs.
But for me there was only one destination on the 44 bus route of interest. The little village of Prosecco, yes the original home of the wine. It was Sunday afternoon and the lunch rush was over in the Trattoria Sociale di Prosecco, or Drustvena Gostilna na Prosek in Slovene – everything is bilingual in this area – and the locals were sitting back, relaxing and enjoying a drink under the shade of the old chestnut trees. Where better to sample the famous local tipple.
There is no ceremony about prosecco, no fancy glasses, it is just a wine that can be spumante (sparkling), frizzante (semi-sparkling) or tranquillo (still) and, at €1.50 a glass, it is very affordable. Sheltered from the cold bora wind that blows down off the mountains, vines have been grown in Pros- ecco since Roman times. Pliny the Elder recounts the story of Livia, wife of Emperor Octavian Augustus, and how she lived to a ripe old age thanks to the benefits of the Pucino wine, famously grown in Prosecco.
After a few glasses of frizzante, a bit of banter with the regulars and just as the local band warmed up for the evening’s entertainment, it was time to head for the 44 back into Trieste. As the little bus wound its way down off the Karst and trundled towards Trieste the late evening sun lit up the bay below us and we were treated to the most spectacular views across the Adriatic to the city.
At the base of his statue in Trieste there is a quote from Joyce that all Triestini love to share – and which I have to agree with – ‘My soul is in Trieste’ although in my case it’s with the old clutch from the Whitstable town coach, which by the way did eventually make it to Kathmandu.
THE NO.44 BUS LED TO PROSECCO – HOME TO THE FAMOUS WINE