Trieste, Italy

Trieste sits on the Gulf of Trieste at the Slovenian border, home to roughly 205,000 residents and the main port of Austria-Hungary until 1918. The 1755 Piazza Unità d'Italia ranks as the largest seafront square in Europe, while the 1468 Miramare Castle, built for Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, overlooks the Adriatic from above. On a single hill, the 1330 San Giusto Castle stands beside a Roman amphitheatre dating to the first century AD. From 1904 to 1915, James Joyce lived in Trieste and wrote most of Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.