For those of you who’ve followed my #100yearsago tweets, this should be a familiar name: the Isonzo River, scene of repeated, grinding, futile battles between the Italians and Austrians in the First World War. The Isonzo River cuts its way through a steep mountain valley in the Julian Alps to the north, exiting around Gorizia, […]

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Before it was transferred to Italy after World War I, Trieste – on the Adriatic Sea – was the main port city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a major center of shipping and commerce, and the self-conscious grandeur the Austrians tried to achieve there is obvious. My hotel in Trieste, the Excelsior, was one […]

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