The debate to establish a “Trieste celebration” was initially in continuity with the nostalgia for Maria Theresa and for everything that Austrian domination represented in these lands.

The undoubted economic advantages due to the enlightened absolutist sovereign and the development of the port of Trieste as the main outlet to the sea of ​​an empire must however be contextualized. Exorbitant tariff concessions to beat the competition of the ports of Northern Europe and pharaonic infrastructural investments to connect the Julian port with Central Europe were the foundations to artificially build a state of economic well-being and a connection with a hinterland that was not the traditional one of the old Roman colony.

Tergeste first and the medieval Municipality of Trieste later have always lived as “area capitals”, constituting the point of reference for the Istrian peninsula and projecting towards the Adriatic, perhaps in competition with Venice, but always in harmony and in linguistic and cultural affinity with the Italian peninsula. The unjust borders set at the end of the Second World War physically severed this historic bond with Istria, but the influx of thousands of Julian-Dalmatian refugees right in the Julian capital has ideally kept it alive.

On November 3, we celebrate the patron saint San Giusto, but it is also the day when Trieste and then Istria in 1918 saw the arrival of the victorious Italian troops who completed the path of the Risorgimento. This date therefore embodies a religious and a civil anniversary at the same time and represents, not only this year, the centenary of the Italian victory in the First World War that risks going unnoticed, the realization of the natural and ideal projection of Trieste and its surroundings towards Italy.

 

Renzo Codarin
President of the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian Culture