The book by Professor Davide Rossi, a lecturer at the University of Trieste and vice president of FederEsuli, " The Long Twentieth Century of the Adriatic Border. Institutional Transitions and Legal Modifications" (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2025) offers a series of episodes, legal institutions, and international treaties that follow a specific path of study that, over the years, has unraveled in a thousand threads and which we have attempted to reconcile with a single thread.

Indeed, we attempted to focus on so-called transition periods, those specific moments that often represent genuine opportunities for innovation, the emergence of new models, or the merging of vastly different regulatory frameworks. We thus sought to recapture under-explored fragments of the border dimension, useful for completing the typical nuances of contested realities, in which nationalisms and ideologies have tragically overlapped and intermingled, leaving indelible marks.

In the brief span of less than a century, the Northern Adriatic has witnessed continuous shifts in sovereignty: from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Kingdom of Italy, from the Free Territory of Trieste to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to which must be added the ideological imprint of fascism, first, and then communism. These processes have left indelible marks on the institutions and juridical spheres, amid resistance and innovation, persistence and attempts at reform.

The book, which aims to retrace this kaleidoscopic experience, highlighting the complexities that necessarily characterize the overlapping of different cultural sensibilities and assumptions, will be presented on Tuesday, March 17th at 17:30 PM at the Association of Istrian Communities (Via Belpoggio, 29/1 – Trieste). The presentation will be introduced by the association's President, Giorgio Tessarolo, and will be presented by Professor Raoul Pupo and Professor Gian Paolo Dolso; the author will be present.