Trieste Italy

John-Pierre Joyce heads to the very corner of Italy to enjoy the cultural riches of a city whose list of musical visitors is both long and illustrious

- John-Pierre Joyce

In her 2001 book about the city, travel writer Jan Morris famously described Trieste as 'the meaning of nowhere' – a place left behind by history and by its political geography.

A quarter of a century later, Morris might have seen the Adriatic port city and capital of Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia region differently. Some of the bittersweet melancholy that she detected still remains: nostalgia for its heyday as Austria-Hungary's principal port of empire; dark memories of Fascist and Nazi rule; the legacy of a precarious existence on the frontline of the Cold War. But the general mood in Trieste these days is very much on the up. The splendid Habsburg-era buildings have been spruced up, the central Piazza Unità d'Italia and the waterfront have been pedestrianised and the city's authorities and cultural institutions have embraced the potential of Trieste's past, present and future position at the cosmopolitan intersection of Mitteleuropa.