Trieste is a city in northeastern Italy with a port. It’s at the end of a long stretch of Italian land that runs between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia. Trieste had a population of 5,700 when Charles VI declared it an imperial free port in 1719,
and it had grown to 156,000 by the time it was stripped of the privilege in 1891.
With its deep-water port, Trieste is a maritime gateway for Northern Italy, Germany, Austria, and Central Europe, just as it was before 1918. The city was also named one of the world’s top 25 small towns for quality of life and one of the top ten safest cities.
Here are some interesting photographs of Trieste’s street life in the 1980s.