“Casa Caprin”: Writers and Politicians of the Kingdom Hosted by Giuseppe Caprin in Trieste

Marina Silvestri will be the featured speaker at the new event promoted by the “Manlio Cecovini Study Society”, scheduled for Tuesday 21 April at 6 pm at the Antico Caffè San Marco. The meeting will focus on one of the emblematic places of Trieste’s cultural life between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the home of Giuseppe Caprin.

A journalist and writer, and author of both fiction and non-fiction – including Lassù nella Trieste asburgica and L’affaire Prezioso – Silvestri will guide the audience through a narrative that intertwines history, culture and intellectual relationships, highlighting Caprin’s central role in Trieste during the final quarter of the nineteenth century.

A patriot, publisher, writer and historian, Giuseppe Caprin (1843–1904) was one of the most prominent figures of his time. After fighting with Garibaldi at Bezzecca, he returned to Trieste, where he learned the printing trade at the Austrian Lloyd, before founding his own business in 1868 together with Bartolomeo Apollonio. Founder and editor of the irredentist newspaper L’Indipendente, and contributor to Libertà e Lavoro, Caprin played a leading role in the city’s political and cultural life, maintaining close ties with figures such as Felice Venezian and Attilio Hortis.

The conference will take the audience inside “Casa Caprin”, the residence in Via dell’Erta, in the district of San Giacomo, now named after Caprin himself. The house, which also housed the Artistic Printing Works, became a lively meeting place for journalists, writers, playwrights and political figures of the Kingdom of Italy, and effectively functioned as a kind of “cultural embassy” of the Julian Littoral.

Among the most distinguished guests were Edmondo De Amicis, Arrigo Boito, Giuseppe Giacosa, Giacinto Gallina, Pompeo Molmenti, Enrico Panzacchi and Salvatore Farina, as well as Matilde Serao, the first woman in Italy to found and edit a daily newspaper. The house was also frequented by men who had taken part in the Republic of San Marco led by Daniele Manin and in the Roman Republic led by Giuseppe Mazzini.

Through testimonies, correspondence and historical documents, Silvestri will reconstruct the personal relationships, intellectual networks and cultural dynamics that animated this Triestine salon, offering a vivid picture of a period marked by intense exchanges of ideas, creative vitality and civic engagement. A scholar of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, Caprin devoted considerable attention in his writings and newspapers to early socialist thought and positivism, reflecting in his many activities not only the political climate of Trieste but also the broader dilemmas of his time.

The event, with free admission, will take place on Tuesday 21 April at 6 pm at the Antico Caffè San Marco and forms part of a programme of meetings through which the Manlio Cecovini Association promotes the cultural and social history of the territory, with the aim of offering the public new opportunities for insight and dialogue.