Trieste sits at the end of long sliver of Italy that curves around the northeastern corner of the Adriatic like a slim, outstretched finger. Firmly rooted in Central Europe, the grandiose old port was ruled by the Hapsburgs for centuries before Italy gained it after World War I. Long a bustling hub of trade and commerce, it was the leading maritime gateway to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the cosmopolitan home to a lively intellectual milieu. Today, Trieste and its hinterland form a narrow Italian outpost between the sparkling waters of the Gulf of Trieste and the rugged karst uplands of Slovenia.

The quintessential frontier town, it has a multi-layered, multi-cultural history that can be read in its broad piazzas, evocative castles, imposing commercial buildings and important houses of worship of various faiths. It can be tasted, too, in the diversity of the local cuisine and savored in more intimate fashion in the city's numerous cafes, wine bars, bookshops, and museums. For centuries, Jews were deeply entwined in the social, cultural and commercial fabric of the city.

A small Jewish community existed here in medieval times, and after 1719, when Trieste was declared a free port, Jewish development paralleled the rapid expansion of the city as a whole. In the 19th century, after the Hapsburg rulers lifted restrictions on Jews and eventually granted them full emancipation, Jews became pioneers in the realms of banking, commerce, and insurance that drove the city's spectacular growth. They held prominent political positions, established important firms and founded or were leading figures in insurance companies such as Assicurazioni Generali, RAS and Lloyd Adriatico. Several local Jewish families were even raised to the Hapsburg nobility. Importantly, too, the Trieste Jewish community produced towering cultural figures such as the writer Italo Svevo and poet Umberto Saba -- both of whom today are commemorated with busts in the city's Public Gardens. Svevo, the author of The Conscience of Zeno , studied English with James Joyce, the great Irish writer who made Trieste his home for a number of years. His background reflected the cosmopolitan, shifting identity so typical of Trieste. Svevo's real name was Ettore Schmitz. He was born into a Jewish family in 1861 and worked most of his life as a clerk. His mother was Italian and his father Austrian, and he himself converted to Catholicism. His works, too, reflect a deep interest in emerging fields of psychoanalysis and self-examination.

About 6,000 Jews lived in Trieste on the eve of World War II, and the community suffered bitterly at the hands of the Nazis and Italian fascists. The Germans in fact established the only Nazi extermination camp in Italy at the Risiera, an old rice warehouse in San Sabba, just outside the city, which today serves as a Holocaust museum and memorial. Today, about 700 Jews live in Trieste, and only hints and traces of the community's former grandeur remain. Still, a walk through the city can provide tantalizing glimpses of a rich and fascinating past. Little is left of the former ghetto area, where Jews were forced to live during most of the 18th century. Most of the downtown district, near today's piazza Riborgo, piazza della Borsa and the ancient Roman theater, was razed and rebuilt during urban renewal projects about 100 years ago. But the grand palaces housing banks and insurance companies, such as those around the vast piazza dell'Unita d'Italia, facing the waterfront, bear witness to the role played by Jewish merchants and financiers.