The windrose at the end of the Molo Audace indicates the directions of four winds, the Greco, Scirocco, Libeccio and Maestro. Away on the edge, between the Greco and the Scirocco, a fat-cheeked cherub boldly blows in the Bora. ‘This ferocious wind from the east-north-east long ago became fundamental to Trieste’s self-image’, according to Jan Morris*. She recounts a local tradition that a raging bora at the time of a battle in AD 394 led to the end of the Roman Empire. A strong wind, one to lean into, blew across the Molo when we were there in May – I like to think that we were experiencing something of what left Morris feeling ‘strangely disturbed’.
And perhaps the long finger of the Molo pointing out to sea is itself a slightly disturbing place. It was originally the Molo San Carlo for Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles VI. Italy had long seen Trieste part of its territory. With the Allied victory at Vittorio Veneto, the Habsburg Empire disintegrated and on 3rd November 1918 the destroyer Audace arrived from Venice carrying the first troops from Italy to set foot in Trieste, a day before the armistice of Villa Giusti came into force. Trieste was formally ceded to Italy under the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920. The Molo was renamed for the destroyer; it stands also as a memorial to both the fragility of empires and cataclysmic times.
* Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, Jan Morris, 2001