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Trieste has an old, stubborn characteristic: you can try to forget it, to bury it, to declare it a “closed matter,” but it always reappears — as a file left open on a ministerial desk, and on those foreign chancelleries’ desks where Trieste’s uncertain status has never been archived. For seventy years, it has been …

Editorial Introduction. When Italian troops landed in Trieste in November 1918, they called it a liberation. In truth, it was a military occupation under armistice — the replacement of one empire with another. Trieste, a cosmopolitan port where five languages mingled before breakfast, was forced into a nationalist mold that shattered its essence. What followed …