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Trieste - Before the Storm
by ALOHA DEAN

 

I was visiting family in Trieste (Trst), Italy (Google Map) on that famous Sunday, 9 July 2007. With unusual clouds in the sky and funeral silences the city looked like a  ghost  town to me. On  the streets there was no traffic, parking was empty and the people are hiding somewhere.  Anybody who visited Trieste in the past knows how city is overcrowded 24/7 and that the only reliable transportation is crowd are motorcycles. There was some lost visitors who had no idea what was going on. Finally on  the Main Square in front of the Town Hall city was the preparing for game and celebration. That day Italy played France for the soccer world champion.

and then that evening

STORM !!!

Italy are world champions for the fourth time after beating ten-man France 5-3 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in Berlin's Olympiastadion on Sunday, 9 July 2006.
Twelve years after losing to Brazil in the first shoot-out in a FIFA World Cup™ Final, Italy made up for that heartbreak as all five men in blue converted their kicks to claim world football's greatest prize for the first time since 1982. For France the pain of defeat was compounded by the sight of Zinedine Zidane, on his last appearance as a professional, leaving the field having been sent off in extra time for butting Marco Materazzi off the ball.
 

History:

In Modern age Trieste had grown into an important port and trade hub. It was constituted a free port by Emperor Charles VI and remained a free port from 1719 until July 1, 1891. The reign of his successor, Maria Theresa of Austria, marked for Trieste in particular the beginning of a flourishing era.
The city was occupied by French troops three times during the Napoleonic Wars, in 1797, 1805 and 1809. In the latter occasion it was annexed to the Illyrian Provinces by Napoleon. In this period Trieste lost in a definitive way its autonomy (even when it was returned to the Austrian Empire in 1813), and status of free port was interrupted.
Following the Napoleonic Wars, Trieste continued to prosper as the Imperial Free City of Trieste (Reichsunmittelbare Stadt Triest) and it became capital of the Austrian Littoral region, the so-called Küstenland. Its role as the principal Austrian commercial port and shipbuilding center was later emphasized by the Foundation of the Austrian Lloyd in 1836 and the construction of the Vienna-Trieste Austrian Southern Railway, completed in 1857
Annexation to Italy
In the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a buzzing cosmopolitan city frequented by artists such as James Joyce, Italo Svevo and Umberto Saba. The city was part of the so-called Austrian Riviera and a very real part of Mitteleuropa. The particular Friulian dialect, called Tergestino, spoken until the beginning of the 19th century, had been gradually supplanted by Triestine (i.e. a Venetian dialect) and other tongues, including Italian, German and Slovenian. While Triestine was the language of the major part of the population, German was the language of the Austrian bureaucracy and Slovenian was the language of the surrounding villages. Viennese architecture and coffeehouses still mark the streets of Trieste today.
Together with Trento, Trieste was the main seat of the irredendist movement, which aimed to the annexion to Italy of all the lands historically inhabited by culturally Italian people. After World War I ended and Austria-Hungary disintegregated, Trieste was transferred to Italy (1920) along with the whole Julian March (Venezia Giulia). The annexion, however, brought a loss of importance for the city, reduced to a border one deprived of a true hinterland. The Slovenian ethnic group (forming about the 25 % of the population) was also suppressed by the Fascist Regime. This led to a period of inner strain which culminated on April 13, 1920, when a group of Italian nationalists burnt the Narodni Dom (National House), the cultural centre of Trieste's Slovenians and Slavs
Second World War
After the constitution of the Italian Social Republic, on September 23, 1943, Trieste was nominally absorbed into this entity. The Germans, however, annexed it to a Adriatic Littoral Operation Zone, which included also Gorizia and Ljubljana and was led by Austrian Friedrich Rainer. Under the Nazi occupation, the sole extermination camp on Italian soil was constructed near Trieste, at the Risiera di San Sabba, on April 4, 1944. The city also suffered from the partisan activity and from Allied bombardments.
Yugoslav and New Zealand involvement
On April 30, 1945 the Italian anti-fascist Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) of don Marzari and Fonda Savio, with 3500 volunteers, incited a revolt against the Nazis. On May, 1 Yugoslav (predominantly Slovene, with some Croat and Croatian Serb) partisans of Tito's army arrived and occupied most of Trieste. The 2nd New Zealand Division continued its advance along Route 14 around the north coast of the Adriatic to Trieste and arrived to the city on the very next day. The German forces eventually capitulated in the evening of May, 2.
Italian city
In 1947, Trieste became an independent state as the Free Territory of Trieste. This state was de facto dissolved in 1954: the city of Trieste went to Italy, while the southern part of the territory went to Yugoslavia. The annexation to Italy was officially proclaimed on October 26 of that year. The border questions with Yugoslavia and the status of the ethnic minorities were settled definitively in 1975 with the Treaty of Osimo.
 

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