Gregory Ananian was a peculiar figure: apparently very modern, yet full of contradictions, much closer to the modern age than to the nineteenth century, to the legacies of the Ottoman Empire than to the enlightenment of the nineteenth century. Ananian was born in Istanbul (1770), within the community of Armenians of Catholic faith. From a wealthy family, Ananian was thus able to attend the faculty of medicine at the University of Padua, then completing his internship in Paris, where there was a school run by Capuchin friars aimed at training Armenians as interpreters and missionaries. Yet, after this immersion in late eighteenth-century Europe, Ananian chose to return to Constantinople. Here he assumed the prestigious role of doctor, specifically obstetrician, of the harem of Selim III (1798-1807). Contrary to the orientalist stereotype according to which the harem represented a place of delights and carnal pleasures, populated by odalisques, veil dancers and muscular eunuchs, in reality the sultan's harem designated all the domestic quarters of the imperial residence and, by extension, of those who lived there. The main purpose of the harem was to provide a son for the sultan; the reproductive function was therefore dominant. The leading role was in fact played by the queen mother, followed by the favourite concubine, the princes and the princesses; below them were the bureaucrats, the eunuchs and the odalisques. The role of the doctor was fundamental in this context, because the harem, overcrowded and poorly ventilated, was a mephitic place, where infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis, easily spread, not to mention the role of the doctor during the birth of the "royal" newborn and, it goes without saying, for the treatment of venereal diseases.
Ananian's action was particularly appreciated during his years of service at the court; however, Selim III's attempts at reform, aimed at overthrowing the excessive power of the janissaries, condemned him to a violent end. Ananian, in turn, was aware of how the role of doctor at the harem was particularly delicate, especially in the case of a change of power within the court; and therefore when a fellow doctor was killed in the street, in front of the people, he thought it best to renounce the position and flee to Europe.

First, with his wife, he came to Odessa, then to Vienna and finally to Trieste, where from 1857 he was registered as a resident at via San Nicolò 2. The move, however, marked his renunciation of medical activity, in favor of political and philanthropic work. As is typical of many Armenians, Ananian also fit perfectly into Trieste society, also giving rise to a long series of donations, connected to his previous activity as an Ottoman doctor.
In 1855 he donated to the Civic Library a thousand volumes from the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, mostly in French, relating to the natural, mathematical and chemical sciences, as well as to the history of Armenia and Turkey.
Between 1858 and 1859 Ananian was among the main contributors to the construction of the Mechitarist church on Giustinelli Street, with a donation of 15 thousand florins.
Ananian's name remains linked to Trieste by the choice of having connected his philanthropic Foundation with the use of the houses he owned. Ananian's will in fact established a series of legacies for the Armenian-Catholic Patriarchate of Constantinople and for the poor Armenian-Catholics and Catholics of Trieste, as well as for his brother and sister still living in the Ottoman capital. His wife also obtained the life usufruct of the two houses in Trieste of the former doctor, namely a building in Contrada del Corso 10 and another in Contrada di Sant'Antonio 2.

The house in Contrada del Corso 10 was designed on three floors, commissioned by Gregorio Ananian, in 1819; the architect in charge was Giuseppe Fister. The building acquired great fame when, after 1840, a pastry shop was opened, managed by the Moravian Adolf Wunsch, who had the happy intuition to insert the so-called “Chinese Cabinet” on the first floor, from 1851. It was a place halfway between a shop and a museum, where for only 20 carantani it was possible to admire and choose a vast range of oriental art products, from China and Japan. Today the Cabinet is considered a progenitor of the current Museum of Oriental Art. The current house was rebuilt between 1905 and 1909 based on a design by Giorgio Polli, with the insertion of a plaque in memory of Ananian.

Following the death of the former physician (August 2, 1865), it took twenty years for the “Ananian School Stipend Foundation” to be established (February 26, 1881).
The income came from the ownership of the building on Corso Italia, currently owned by the Municipality of Trieste. Ananian's original intention was for the Foundation to finance the salaries of deserving students at the Trieste Gymnasium, the Vienna Polytechnic, and the faculties of politics and medicine at the University of Vienna. Ananian's gaze was therefore not only directed at Trieste, but at the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a whole. There was also a strong religious/national element, since half of the beneficiaries had to be poor Catholics or Armenian Catholics from Trieste and the other half poor Armenian Catholics born elsewhere. Today the Foundation supports high school and university students in Trieste, provided they have been resident in Trieste and its province for at least 5 years. Another fifth of the funds is instead destined for citizens of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, eastern Veneto, and Istria.

Sources: Luca G. Manenti, “From Constantinople to Trieste: Life of Gregory Ananian, Armenian Physician and Benefactor“, Milan, Biblion, 2015.

Zeno Saracino – 16/10/2021
Source: TriesteAllNews