There are few cities so sublime as Trieste. It is a work of art, architecture, geography topography and variety. Its people are a mosaic, at once Byzantine, Hapsburg, and Italian, and at all times cosmopolitan.

At the top of the Adriatic Sea, literally hemmed in by the crags of the Alps, which rise, at a clutch-burning grade from its port, lies the city of Trieste, in, but somehow not of, Italy. For nearly seven hundred years, the city served as the Austrian Empire’s key commercial port, the outlet of Central Europe to the Mediterranean and beyond. Like the Austrian Empire itself, Trieste became a mosaic of nationalities.