Trieste, Italy: A Surprise For A Couple Of Reasons

Travel article

Now for a change of pace from the usual.

No, this is not Venice. It's the Grand Canal in this northeastern Italian city. Trieste is a transit point between Slovenia and Venice. In 2012, while travelling through Europe, we only had one night in Trieste, so we decided to stay in the city's centre. Our hotel, at the Grand Duchi is located right on the main square, the Piazza Unita D'Italia. This large square is surrounded by historical buildings like so many in Italy.

No, this is not Venice. It's the Grand Canal in this northeastern Italian city. Trieste is a transit point between Slovenia and Venice. In 2012, while travelling through Europe, we only had one night in Trieste, so we decided to stay in the city's centre. Our hotel, at the Grand Duchi is located right on the main square, the Piazza Unita D'Italia. This large square is surrounded by historical buildings like so many in Italy.

While the canal and square are not Venice's, old historic buildings and cafes made for an attractive setting. On our drive in, however, we found something surprising and a reminder of the horrific past.

Risiera di San Sabba 

We had heard that Jews and others were incarcerated in a concentration camp in Trieste during the Second World War and that it was now a museum. Yes, it was a surprise that Italy had a concentration camp. We decided that we would go and visit this museum called Risiera di San Sabba on our way into the central part of the city. 

The building was initially a rice warehouse, but when the Nazis took over Italy, they converted it into a concentration camp for Jews, Italian partisans, Croatians, communists and anyone they deemed unfit or defective. Some of the museum is as it was initially. At the same time, other portions of it were destroyed by the Nazis when Allied forces were approaching the city. The location of the destroyed crematorium and the chimney have been represented by a sculpture and steel plates.

Many thousands were imprisoned, tortured or simply executed, while some, mainly Jews, were sent to other concentration camps. The horrific thing was that this camp, like so many others, had the means of gassing people and a crematorium to dispose of the bodies.

The museum is a stark reminder of the brutality and inhumanity of which people are capable.

Grotto Gigante

On our way out of Trieste, we wanted to go visit a cave that we had heard about which was in the outlying area of Trieste. The cave is appropriately called Grotto Gigante (large cave). It was surprising where the cave was located, basically at the end of a suburban street.

This cave is something else––it's enormous. We had to climb down 500 steps to reach the lowest portion of the cave, but we were still not down to the bottom. The depth of the cave is 120 metres. The volume of the cave is over a million cubic metres. It is purported to be the largest tourist cave in the world. One of the stalagmites is 12 metres high.

Our descent into the cave was stunning! The stairs have been built into the cave walls, and when we looked over the edge from the top, it was pretty scary. We wondered how they managed to make them in the first place.

There were also 2 plastic columns, each with thin wires, that ran from the floor to the cave's ceiling. Our guide told us that these were geodesic sensors connected to computers in a building near the cave. They measure very small movements in the earth, including earthquakes.

This cave is remarkable sight if you are ever in this area of Italy. It wasn't easy to convey the enormity of this structure with our photos. If you have knee issues, though - give it a miss.