Trieste

Molo Audace sunsets, San Giusto ramparts and bus 36 to Miramare

Start the first morning on Piazza Unità d'Italia and walk out along the Molo Audace for the view back at the palaces. Climb through the Old Town past the Roman theatre and the Arco di Riccardo to San Giusto, and walk the castle ramparts before lunch.

In the afternoon drift down into the Borgo Teresiano and along the Canal Grande, stopping in one of the old cafés. In the evening eat at a buffet, the local tavern, and go back to the pier for sunset.

On day two, catch bus 36 along the coast past Barcola to Miramare Castle and its park, with time for a swim on the way back in summer. After lunch head up to the Karst: walk the Strada Vicentina toward Prosecco for views over the gulf, and if an osmiza is open nearby, finish there with a glass of local wine. Come back down for a fish dinner in the centre.

Caldaia at a buffet, a bowl of jota and Karst osmize

The cooking here mixes Italian, Austrian and Slavic traditions. The classic place to eat is a buffet, a tavern where caldaia, mixed boiled pork, is carved to order and served with mustard and grated horseradish. Jota is the local soup of beans, potato and cabbage, and gnocchi come in the Austrian dumpling style, sometimes stuffed with plums.

From the sea, look for brodetto fish soup and sardoni in savor, marinated pilchards.

Coffee has mattered here since the 1700s, and the historic cafés are as much a sight as a place to drink. Triestines have their own names for coffee orders, so ask the barista what you are getting. For wine, try the red Terrano and the whites Vitovska and Malvasia. Up on the Karst, the osmize are farmhouses that open for a few days at a time to sell their own wine, cheese and cured meats; a leafy branch at the roadside shows which ones are open.

Over the Slovene border, up to Opicina and the Barcolana weekend

Trieste sits right on the border, which makes it an easy base for two countries. Slovenia begins about 8 km from the centre and Croatia about 30 km to the south, and buses from the coach station beside Trieste Centrale cross into both. Within Italy, local trains and buses reach Udine and the lagoon town of Grado.

Closer in, the Karst plateau above the city is walking country, with the Strada Vicentina running about 4 km from Opicina toward Prosecco. Many villages up here are mostly Slovene-speaking.

Timing matters. May, June and September bring a warm sea and calm days for Barcola and the Karst. July and August are hot, and locals crowd the seafront. Winter is quiet, but the bora, the cold north-easterly wind, can gust hard enough to make the waterfront unpleasant. On the second Sunday of October the Barcolana regatta fills the gulf with sails and the town with visitors.

Cafés, the Verdi opera house and Svevo's city

Trieste grew rich as the Habsburg Empire's main port, and the city still reads like a meeting of Latin, Slavic and German Europe. Italo Svevo was born here, and the poet Umberto Saba, who ran a second-hand bookshop on Via San Nicolò, called its character a surly grace.

The historic cafés are part of that story: high ceilings, newspapers on wooden poles and coffee ordered in local terms, a nero or a capo. Order at the bar for the local price.

The Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi, which dates from 1800, is modelled on La Scala in Milan and has staged Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. It has two halls, the main theatre and the smaller Sala Ridotto.

Look up as you walk too. Murals by international street artists have appeared across neglected corners of the city, and the tourist office has a route that links them.

Risiera di San Sabba and Monte Grisa

The Risiera di San Sabba, a former rice-husking plant in the southern suburbs, was the only Nazi camp in Italy with a crematorium. It was set up in October 1943 and used for transit and killing of partisans, Jews and political prisoners. A presidential decree made it a national monument in 1965, and it is now a civic museum, open daily from 9:00 to 19:00 with free entry.

On the Karst edge above the bay, the Monte Grisa sanctuary, the national temple of Mary Mother and Queen, stands about 300 m above the sea. Its triangular concrete bulk is lit at night and visible from all over the city, and the terrace in front has the widest view of the Gulf of Trieste.

Grado for a beach day

For sand, many Triestini head west to Grado. Its south-facing beach runs about 10 km, the bathing establishments still have a Habsburg feel and the lagoon behind covers some 16,000 hectares of islets and channels. Grado has flown the Blue Flag for over 30 years. The sea there is shallower than off the rocks of Barcola.

Miramare, the archduke's white castle

The white castle on the Grignano point, about 8 km north of the centre, was built between 1856 and 1860 for Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg and his wife Charlotte of Belgium. Maximilian left it in 1864 to become Emperor of Mexico and was executed there three years later, and the rooms are kept much as the couple furnished them, with a ship's-cabin study and views straight out to sea.

The castle is now a state museum run by the Ministry of Culture. Its park covers about 22 hectares and was planted by Maximilian on a bare Karst headland, with exotic trees gathered on his naval voyages, ponds and a small harbour. Walking the park is free; the castle interior is ticketed, and opening hours run from morning to early evening for most of the year, with closures at Christmas and New Year. Check the current price on the museum's site before going, as published figures differ.

Bus 36 from the station gets you there, or walk the seafront from Barcola, about an hour on flat pavement past the bathing platforms.

Back in town, the Civic Aquarium on the waterfront is small but worth half an hour, with local Adriatic species and amphibians in an educational layout that dates from the 1930s. In early October, the Barcolana regatta, held on the second Sunday of the month, turns the gulf white with sails and fills the waterfront with a week of events, so rooms for that weekend need booking months ahead.

Grado also flies a Green Flag each year, an award Italian paediatricians give to beaches suited to small children.