Giardino Pubblico Muzio de' Tommasini

The Giardino Pubblico is a walled garden of plane trees, exotic conifers and marble busts, opened in 1864 and dedicated to botanist and civic leader Muzio de' Tommasini.

Why it matters

Opened in 1864 and dedicated to Muzio de' Tommasini, a podestà and student of local flora, the garden retains features of a nineteenth-century public park: cast-iron gates, axial paths, labelled trees and commemorative sculpture.

Thirty-one busts of notable citizens line the avenues, including Italo Svevo, James Joyce and Umberto Saba. Scenes from two screen adaptations of Svevo's novels were also filmed here.

What to notice

The municipal cultural portal counts 368 native and exotic trees, including plane trees, elms, oaks and horse chestnuts, alongside rarer species associated with de' Tommasini's botanical interests. The garden also contains a pond and a children's play area.

The busts include writers Svevo, Joyce, Saba, Slataper, Stuparich, Srečko Kosovel and Virgilio Giotti, as well as mountaineer Julius Kugy, historian Pietro Kandler, journalist Silvio Benco, painter Umberto Veruda and actor Alessandro Moissi.

Context and history

The garden opened in 1864, at the moment when Trieste, then the chief port of the Austrian Littoral, was investing in the amenities of a modern metropolis. Naming it for Muzio de' Tommasini linked the new park to the figure who had led the city's administration through the mid-19th century while pursuing serious botanical research on the flora of the surrounding region — a fusion of science and civic pride that the tree collection still expresses.

Over the following century and a half the garden accumulated its commemorative layer of busts and became an established location for the city's public life and even its cinema: the Turismo FVG film-locations itinerary notes that Mauro Bolognini's "Senilità", with Claudia Cardinale, and a version of "La coscienza di Zeno" both filmed scenes among its avenues and ponds.