La Grotta Gigante is a giant cave just outside Trieste. We took bus 42 to get there and got some great views of the city and the bay on the way to Sgonico, the town where the cave is located. We got there early, had a cappuccino. I sketched and we ate some blackberries off a neglected bush. Along the way we had fabulous views of Trieste and the bay, perhaps the best yet.
The main cavern is 107 m (351 ft) high, 65 m (213 ft) wide and 130 m (430 ft), long. It is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest tourist cave. One of the formations is about 12 meters (39 feet) high and up to 4 meters in girth.
A thin cable 100 meters (328 feet) in length supports two pendula which record the movement of the earth’s crust. There was an earthquake of 8+ on the Richter in 1989 although the cave suffered no damage.
There are 500 steps to the bottom of the main cavern, 500 back up. There is an additional 160 meter drop which is not for ordinary visits.
Here is a short slideshow video, with a bit of scary music to go with it. Don’t ask my why scary other than it would be frightening in the total darkness.
Croatia is just to our south, and we’d never been there. It has a certain allure because it is Western European but somehow not, as it was part of Yugoslavia during the post war period. It became more Slavic during that period and the traditional folk dance music you hear in the video (link below) reflects that origin.
Pula like Trieste is on the Adriatic. Most noted for the Roman Amphitheater, it also has a temple and other bits from the Roman era. It is an attractive town with 20 km of rocky beach the locals love.
To get there by land you cross Slovenia, so it’s 3 countries in two hours on the fast bus, but four hours through even more of the Croatian countryside on the way back. Slovenia is in the EU but Croatia is not, so there’s no border check leaving Italy but in and out of the other two countries there is. With my shiny new Italian passport we had no problems, although Peg was stamped in and the border guard suggested she get a ‘permesso di sojourno,” (residence permit) which as my wife and with an officially registered marriage certificate, should be no problem at all.
It’s a lovely town with architecture from the 13th, 19th and 20th century. There are pedestian zones, lots of cafes and eateries, summer sunshine and today a very pleasant temperature, in the low 20’s. People walk about in shorts and lightweight shirts. You hear what I assume is Croatian, lots of Italian and perhaps as much English; people who deal with tourists spoke it reasonably well.
It’s about a ten minute walk to the Amphitheater from the bus station. The amphitheater is enormous, probably not as big as the Coliseo in Rome, but it is much more intact. Only the seating area is largely gone, maybe a few hundred left out of the original 25,000. It must have been spectacular when filled, and the fabric roof in place.
The main pedestrian zone is one of the more attractive ones we’ve seen but not all that different from others. We had lunch in the area. The service was very attentive, and the food quite good, for a bit less than Trieste, even, although we’d heard Croatia has become quite expensive.
It is still an active port and ship building continues. There are large bays for ship repair as well as large yellow cranes for unloading and loading cargo vessels.
A Bit of History
Human remains (Homo erectus) in the area date to 1.5 million years. Pottery dates to 6000 BCE. Inhabitation in Pula proper dates to the 10 century BCE. Greek pottery and statuary remains attest to that people”s presence.
Starting around the 1st century BCE a Venetic or Illyrian tribe lived here. Under Julius Caesar the town became an important port, with a population then of around 30,000. However it sided with Cassius against Augustus, and the town was destroyed. It was soon rebuilt and with it came the amphitheater (finished in 68 CE) which you will see in the slide show video.
The Venetians took over the city in the 1200’s and the Hapsburgs arrived in 1997. After WWI the whole peninsula became part of Italy. Mussolini persecuted the Slavic residents and many fled. The Germans took over in WWII after Italy collapsed, and Pula was bombed heavily by the Allies after the u-boat installation. Pula joined Yugoslavia in 1947. Most of the Italians fled in 1946-47 in the run up. To this day, Croatia is predominantly Roman Catholic.
Trieste is a port town with hillsides that end not far from the water, whose hills as a result are part and parcel of the city. Buses and a cable car tram take you up and down, although the inclines are certainly not too steep to walk in most cases. Near the port are many large buildings from the turn of the century and earlier, including both public and private structures, which help make walking about quite pleasurable, as do the broad boulevards and narrow pedestrian streets.
The bay is a wide natural port and a gorgeous one to view from high points in town and on the nearby cliffs, which allow for panoramic views from the windows of the trains and buses. It has been a port since at least Roman times and many ships load and unload here. Trade has produced some tremendous fortunes, reflected in the luxurious palaces scattered about the town. At least two now house museums show casing the owners’ collections as well as temporary exhibits: Civico Museo Sartorio (see the previous entry) and Museo Revoltella (below). The interiors are fabulously decorated from floor to ceiling.
The Piazza de la Unita d’Italia overlooks the port area, flanked by beautiful and large public buildings, swank restaurants and bars lining one side.
Piazza dell’Unita d’Italia at night
The population is a mere 200,000 and this being August, many are elsewhere for holidays. Getting around is easy unless you are out late, as buses stop early. There is comparatively little traffic for such wide boulevards. Pedestrian zones are a plenty, lined with attractive shops and lots of outdoor seating for a cappuccino or a glass of wine.
Viale XX Settembre, a pedestrian zone
There are five grand cafes around town, where you can have coffee and a sweet in a luxurious turn of the century setting, at very reasonable prices. Above is Caffe San Marcos.
Summer weather is fairly comfortable. Temperatures range between 13 and 30 centigrade (48-85F). It can be a bit humid so in the sun it can be rather warm, but shade is not usually far away, making Trieste an excellent summer destination. You need not worry about huge crowds, either, as there are not many tourists.
The restaurants will not disappoint and the prices are reasonable. A few nights ago we went to a place near Piazza de la Unita, definitely a local place though. We had mussels, a pasta and a meat course, desert and liter of wine for €45 for two, the local wine just 8 euros of the total. You can find many places for less, say a tavola calda (literally a ‘hot table’, but these vary from what they are in Rome), and really enjoy the food as well. We had pizza at a restaurant on XX September with wine, and it came to €26. There is plenty of local wine, mostly white, light and served well chilled, super for this time of year.
We have not found any street markets. Although there is a municipal market, it is indoors. There are few ‘panificios’ (bread bakers), but there are many pastry shops. All the grocery stores sell bread and it’s pretty good and crusty. Cheese is plentiful and quite reasonably priced. We just bought some mozzarella de bufala (Italian water buffalo) for just a euro for about 125 grams, on sale. In the US it would be 10 times that. There’s a wide variety as well, including old favorites like scamorza (smoked and otherwise), ricotta and various hard cheeses in the Parmigiano (Parmesan) family. I’ll do a bit of a write up soon on the cheese, as we’ve just bought some interesting ones.
People are quite friendly, willing to talk, and will stop to help us on the street whenever we have the map out. There are friendly crowds at the many outdoor concerts near the Unita, which the city offers free of charge. It’s a lovely venue and we’ve enjoyed some good jazz peformances, one of which included several dance groups.
Slovenia is very close by and Croatia not much farther, but we have not visited either yet. You can go by bus, train or ferry. There are other ferries to nearby destinations, and you can get to Venice this way as well.
Trieste is a little known treasure of a town. Come and spend some time here. There is plenty of interest in these pleasant surroundings.
We visited the Civico Museo Sartorio this week. It’s on the other side of Trieste but certainly walkable for us. It is another mansion owned by a wealthy family that now holds the family’s collections, furniture with plenty of room for exhibits. The mansion is huge, at least 4 stories and I bet there’s a hundred rooms.
The Sartorio family lived there from 1775 until Anna Segrè Sartorio donated the property to Trieste, requesting that it become a museum. The Allies made it their headquarters after WW2 until around 1953. The city renovated afterwards. Stunning floors and ceilings, endless displays of ceramics, and portraits that went on and on.
The special exhibit displayed the drawings of Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, an amazing artist whose vast out of drawings and paintings make him one of the worlds best albeit less known. . He died in 1770. Here’s one of his drawings. Many of the ones we saw were done in ink. They’ve been restored, having been found in bad condition. The ink was acidic and had to be neutralized, and the backings removed and replaced. This is quite an extensive collection.
It’s a lovely venue for concerts, just 100 meters from the port in a magnificent square. Several thousand were there, and hundreds more eating gelato in the nearby cafes. The band was a way too loud in the beginning. There’s a lot of brass and those first songs were heavy on them. I tire of being hit over the head with noise. The band’s leader paces constantly, which remained forever a distraction, but the musicians he assembled and leads are excellent. Here’s a video of one of the numbers.
It’s just a 10 or 15 minute walk to the docks from our place on the hill. There you can take ferries to various destinations in the Trieste area, as well as some in Slovenia and Croatia. Today we went to Muggia, just 30 minutes on the ferry.
It’s a small town with a tiny beach, so tiny in fact that some people laid out blankets on concrete pads prepared for that purposes. The water is crystal clear, and with temperatures in the low 80’s you’ll get plenty warm, hot even in the sun.
We stopped for a coffee in one of the plazas. There were plenty of people about, casually dressed if not skimpily so in swim suits.
It’s still a bit of a fishing village and we watched two men preparing to take their vessel out. They were looping some string onto flags, perhaps for crab pots.
The short slide show will give you a good feel for the place.
This is from our half day excursion via bus and the Delfino Verde (Green Dolphin), the local ferry. It was a perfect day and a lovely journey. The bus was quite crowded on the way out. People were heading to the ‘beach,’ which is a narrow strip on the coast. Sometimes they laid on platforms, other times on rocks. They swam in public beaches and off the break water.
Lunch was one of the many restaurants that line the coast in the villages and resort zones. It was the shell mixture you see plus a langostino or two. The sauce was garlic, parsley, probably some fish stock which made it perfectly salted. It was enough for two for only 12 euros. The local white wine is quite good. The bread was so so.
These photos are from our June 2014 visit to Zambia. Our nephew is serving in the Peace Corps, following his brother in el Salvador and us in Panama. The drawings in the video are from my journal, which I will publish. This was my favorite part of the journey. As spectacular as the animals were, as great as Victoria Falls was, this was more meaningful, touching me profoundly.
Here’s a people with so little in material goods who are just above subsistence and yet they expressed such joy at our arrival and for the next three days of our time there.
These were taken mostly at the Museo Revoltella Gallery of Modern Art. It is right near the harbor. The gallery has some very good examples of Italian painters from the late 1800’s, and some from earlier as well but I find them less interesting. The palace is itself worth a visit. Pasquale Revoltella ran a successful import business and was active in insurance as well (Assicurazioni Generali). This eventually led to his involvement with the construction of the Suez Canal, which he helped finance and was a member of the board of directors.
