the top of Trieste

Our last full day in Trieste brought some drizzly weather so we went through town to the hop on/hop off stop near the roman ruins. Trieste was enclosed by walls built in 33–32 BC on Emperor Octavian’s orders. The city developed greatly during the 1st and 2nd centuries.  The Roman theatre lies at the foot of the San Giusto hill, facing the sea. The construction partially exploits the gentle slope of the hill, and much of the theatre is made of stone. The topmost portion of the amphitheatre steps and the stage were supposedly made of wood.

From the roman theater ruins, we caught the bus to the stop at the top of the hill overlooking town, where the oldest churches are located.  There we saw St. Justus Cathedral, symbol of Italian Trieste during the Risorgimento, and named after the city's Patron, St. Justus. This church dates back to 1320: its interiors are decorated by beautiful Byzantine mosaics.some beautiful mosaics.

also on the hilltop were some more roman ruins (a few columns left from a temple dedicated to Zeus) and a fortress like castle...

after spending time up on top we caught the bus back down to the center of town and walked around, making an ill advised decision to have lunch at a pizza place that was awful- bad food and bad service... but we made up for our disappointment by having gelato before heading back to the main square and a bit of relaxing time before dinner.

We had dinner at Cittadicherso - and while it was reasonably priced with good food we liked the places from the prior two evenings much better.

we had mussels and risotto to start and then bronzino and scampi for mains

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to pack - we leave in the morning for Venice - the trip is a little over two hours by train. So Trieste had been on our lists as a place to visit for quite some time and we found it charming but in Michelin parlance not "worth a journey" - if heading to the Istrian peninsula or to Slovenia, it would be a very nice stop along the way - worth two nights with a full day in between to see the city sights.  That said, apparently the Barcolana regatta is quite the draw with more than 25,000 participants and many times that number in spectators.  From the number of tents we saw erected along the harbor - clearly a lot more than sailing goes on during the weekend of the regatta. So that may be a draw for some travelers and the very weekend to stay away for others--- just sayin....