HISTORIC LITERARY CAFÉS

Trieste, the city of coffee & cafés

If sipping a good cup of coffee is considered to be a pleasure in many Italian cities, in Trieste this takes on even greater significance. Not only due to the traditional Triestine vocation related to the roasting and marketing of this product, but above all, due to the fact that in the many characteristic, suggestive literary cafés in the city centre established writers such as Saba, Svevo and Joyce used to meet each other!

Even today, you can meet intellectuals and celebrities such as Claudio Magris, who dedicated these words specifically to the literary cafés in Trieste: the café is the place in which you can be alone and among people at the same time!

“Making a stop” at the various cafés in the city centre

It would probably be only right to dedicate at least one page for each of these living monuments, but in the meanwhile, it is sufficient for you to know that the Albergo alla Posta, thanks to its exceptional location, is perfect for you to be able to visit all the literary cafés in Trieste. If we were to provide you with a mini-itinerary so you could visit the most famous ones, then we would have to mention the Caffè Tommaseo (the oldest, founded in 1830), the Caffè degli Specchi (in Piazza Unità d’Italia, in the beating heart of the city), the Tergesteo (mentioned by Saba in his “Canzoniere”), the Stella Polare (where many beautiful Triestine girls have found their fortune abroad after meeting and dancing with American military officers), the Torinese, the Urbanis, the Pirona (where it is said that Joyce reflected at length while preparing to write his Ulysses) and the Antico Caffè San Marco (one of the main meeting points of the greatest Triestine intellectuals and writers).

These literary cafés surprisingly succeed in telling the stories of yesteryear that speak of culture, invasions, freedom and, at the same time which are modern and can be perfectly in line with the urban context.