Trieste

The enlightened rule of the Empress Maria Theresa

1 March 2025 9:00 am

‘She hates to see anyone put to death’, said one contemporary of the monarch who abolished torture and serfdom and pioneered the practice of open weekly audiences with the public

The Church of Sant’Antonio Nuovo at the end of the Grand Canal

Beautiful untamed Trieste, aka the Capital of Nowhere

5 January 2019 9:00 am

‘Welcome to the free territory of Trieste,’ reads the sign in the shop window. ‘US and UK come back!’ For…

Reaping the whirlwind of climate change

11 November 2017 9:00 am

I spent part of the summer sailing around Ithaca and the Ionian Sea. It was a good reminder of how…

The evil that men do

5 August 2017 9:00 am

The first thing to say about Claudio Magris’s new novel is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable. There…