San Giusto Castle Audio Guide

San Giusto Castle: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to San Giusto Castle

   Welcome to San Giusto Castle, the fortress that sits on top of its hill and looks out over the city of Trieste, its gulf and the land behind it. For many people it is one of the city's most recognizable symbols, and the moment you arrive you can see why: this is a place built to watch over everything below. The castle you see today is not one single building from one single moment. It grew in stages between 1468 and 1636, and from above it forms a triangular fortified complex with a bastion at each corner. Inside, it holds a museum of arms and armor, a collection of Roman stones, and a panoramic terrace. As we walk through, we will look at three layers of the story: how the castle was built and rebuilt, what lies in its Roman collection, and what it feels like to stand on its walls and look out. The hill itself is far older than any of its walls, so keep that in mind as we begin.

2. 02

   Three Bastions and a Habsburg Captain

   Let's start with the building itself. In 1382 Trieste, worn out by constant Venetian reprisals, signed an act of surrender to Austria. Then, in 1468, the Habsburg emperor Frederick the Third ordered a fortress, flanked by a tower, to be built on top of the San Giusto hill. It was to be a residence for the Imperial Captain, the Habsburgs' representative in the city, and the order said the citizens were to pay for it. The bastions came afterwards, one at a time. The first, the Round Bastion, went up in 1508 and 1509, built by the Venetians, who occupied the city for just one year. Some say they built it perhaps as a taunt. The polygonal Lalio Bastion followed in 1557, and in 1636 the Fiorito Bastion completed the fortress. Here is the surprising part: for all this building, the castle never saw significant military activity. That is a large part of why it has survived to this day. It served mostly as the Imperial Captain's residence and as a garrison. You can still walk the ramparts that link its defensive fronts, and they give a clear idea of how the watch over the city worked. Many visitors reach the castle over a ramp that ends in a wooden drawbridge across a narrow moat, then pass through a cross-vaulted hall into the Piazzale delle Milizie, the Square of the Troops.

3. 03

   Roman Stones and an Older Hill

   The hill was important long before the Habsburgs arrived. In the late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, a castelliere, a fortified hilltop settlement of a typical prehistoric kind, occupied its summit. In Roman times the area became an important urban center. The top of the hill, which the Romans thought of as the Capitoline hill, held the civic basilica, the forum and the propylaeum. That Roman past is on display inside the Lalio Bastion, in the Lapidarium Tergestino. It holds around 130 inscriptions, bas-reliefs and sculptures, and these pieces have helped historians reconstruct the history and appearance of Roman Tergeste, as Trieste was then called. Since 2001 the collection has been housed in this bastion. Before that, the Roman stone finds were displayed in the Orto Lapidario garden. As you move through the display, look for the dedications to Jupiter, Cybele, Silvanus, the Bona Dea, Hercules and Minerva. There are also pieces from the city walls and statues from the Roman theater. Then there are the altars, stelae, pillars, urns and sarcophagi from the cemeteries, which carry the names of ancient inhabitants of the city. Standing in front of them, you are reading the names of real people who lived in Tergeste.

4. 04

   From Fortress to Museum

   In 1930 the castle became the property of the Municipality of Trieste. After careful restoration, it opened to the public as a museum in 1936. Today it houses the Civic Museum of San Giusto Castle and its Armoury, along with the Lapidarium Tergestino. The armoury is set in the fifteenth and sixteenth century quarters of the Captain's House, the historic core of the castle. You enter through the Round Bastion. The route begins with an introductory room that tells the story of Trieste's growth through old views, historic photographs and a scale model of the early twentieth century. The model shows the city as it looked before it expanded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On the first floor you will find the Caprin Room and its Anteroom, created to hold the furnishings of Giuseppe Caprin, who lived from 1843 to 1904. He was a journalist, historian, publisher and Italian patriot. His Renaissance-style house, built in 1878 in the San Giacomo district, was a salon of Italian culture. The exhibition halls of the Fiorito Bastion also host temporary exhibitions, which are included in the museum ticket. The castle's meaning shifted over time. After the First World War and the annexation of Trieste to Italy, the fortress took on a different political and symbolic significance.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Before you leave, take one more slow walk along the walls. From the bastions you get one of the widest views over the Gulf of Trieste. On a clear day it runs from the historic center to the harbor piers, and on to the Istrian coast and the Karst plateau behind the city. That view was a military advantage in the past. Today it is one of the main reasons people climb up here. As you look, think about the layers beneath your feet: a prehistoric hilltop settlement, a Roman city center, and fortifications added between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The ramparts work a little like an open-air handbook of military building in those centuries. The castle is also closely tied to the nearby cathedral and the archaeological area around it, so they make a natural next stop. See how the stones, the skyline and the sea fit together, and you may find the hill has more stories than we had time to tell.