History of Duino and its Castles Duino (Slovene: Devin, German: Tybein) is a village of Duino-Aurisina, a municipality (comune) of the Province of Trieste in the northeastern region of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. The settlement is picturesquely situated on the steep Karst cliffs of the Gulf of Trieste, north of the city of Trieste. Duino was attested in historical sources as Duino in 1139, Dewin in the 13th century, and Tybein c. 1370, among various other forms of the name. Although equivalents of the Slovene name appear in various Slavic languages (cf. Slovak Devín, Polish Dziewin, etc., all ultimately derived from Slavic děva ('girl'), the name of this settlement is not originally Slavic. Rather, it derives from Romance tubīnum, Latin tubus '(water) pipe'. The Lords of Duino were first mentioned as such around 1150. The first member of this family, a certain Wondelsalchus, is already mentioned in 1112 A.D. in the records as a vassal of the Patriarch of Aquileia. Later, Hugo became the leader of the family of the Tybein Lords, who were liegemen of the dukes of Inner Austria (Carantania).From their ancestral seat, located on a rock high above the Adriatic Sea, they controlled the trade routes running from the city of Monfalcone along the coast to the Istrian peninsula. Serving as ministeriales of the Counts of Gorizia and also of their successors, the Habsburg archdukes of Inner Austria, they secured their position in the Friuli region. For three centuries, the castle was the family seat of the Tybein Lords. They owned huge domains in the Karst (Carso) region. Dante Alighieri is reputed to have stopped at Duino to write a few lines, and thus the exposed ridge (cliff) between the two fortresses is named after him.
Starting as early as 1423, Venice and the Ottoman Empire began fighting each other, culminating in eight wars against each other that ended with Venetian defeat in the early 18th century. In the Turkish–Venetian War of 1499-1503 for control of contested lands in the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea, and the Adriatic Sea, the fighting reached northern Italy, culminating with Venice seeking peace in 1503. The fort was destroyed at some point during the fighting and was never rebuilt. The old Duino Castle remains in ruins to this day. Below the ruins of the old castle lies a snow-white rock projecting into the sea. Called the Dama Bianca (White Lady), the rock resembles a female figure draped in a long veil. veiled woman, thus inspiring many gothic legends. According to one legend, an evil king threw his wife from a cliff. The sky, moved to pity by the cries of the girl, turned her into stone before she touched the water. It is said that every night the the White Lady she comes off the rock and begins to wander through the rooms of the castle until dawn when she returns to the rock.
The last descendant of the Tybein Lords was Hugo VI von Tybein († 1392). His daughter married Reinhard Walsee, who in 1395, with the permission of the duke of Inner Austria, took possession of the domains belonging to the former Tybein Lords.The domains figured as seigniory, meaning, the territory over which the lord holds jurisdiction. The Walsee family kept Duino until 1472 AD.
In 1389, at the order of the Wallsee family, a new Duino Castle was built on a cliff on the ruins of a Roman military outpost that was called Castellum Pucinum, and it is near the cliff where the old castle ruins are still found. The last descendant of the Wallsee family was Hugo VI von Tybein († 1392). His daughter married Reinhard Walsee, who in 1395, with the permission of the duke of Inner Austria, took possession of the domains belonging to the former Tybein Lords. The domains figured as seigniory, meaning, the territory over which the lord holds jurisdiction. The Wallsee kept Duino until 1472 A.D. In 1483, after the death of the last Wallsee owner, Ramberto III, the castle passed to the House of Austria. Emperor Frederic III, who was also a duke, i.e., the ruler of Inner Austria, bought the domains, then the seigniory was given in pledge to several families. In 1508, however, after having been used as a prison, it was passed on in fief to the Hofer family and became the residence of the Luogar and Hofer. The last member of this family, Mathias Hofer died in 1587. His heir became his son-in-law Raymond Thurn-Valsassina, who in first marriage was the consort of his daughter Louise and in second marriage of his daughter Clare. Raymond additionally adopted the family name Hofer, which made him the beginner of a new Thurn family line. The Thurns from Inner Austria were in fact a line of the Lombardian family "della Torre" that appeared already in the 12th century. The County Valsassina (Valis Saxina) was in their possession, from which the second part of their name origins. In the fights with the Viscontis, one of the Thurns, Salvino by name, found refuge by his relative, the Patriarch of Aquileia, and from him originated the Austrian Thurns. Raymond Thurn-Hofer and Valsassina was an illuminate lord. In 1598, he called to Devin several members of the Order of Servants of St. Mary, and asked them to set up a school for noble sons. Ahead from all of them was Gregorio Alasio da Sommaripa, who in 1607 issued the Vocabolario Italiano e Schiavo. He came to Duino as a friar, and he was consecrated as a monk in 1602.
Raymond Thurn-Hofer and Valsassina died in 1623. His son John Philip continued the lineage. The last male descendant of this line was Joseph Thurn-Hofer and Valsassina, a naval hero, who died in Venice in 1831. His sister, Countess Resi (Theresa), who married to Prince Egon Carl Hohenlohe Waldenburg Schillingsfürst, became a widow not long after her marriage. Their daughter, Marie, then married Prince Alexander Thurn-Taxis and thus acquired the name of Princess/Countess Marie von Thurn and Taxis-Hohenlohe. From the 17th up until the 20th century this family played host to a lot of very renowned guests in their castle.
At the end of the 19th century, the castle became the property of and one of two residences for Prince Alexander Johann Vincenz Rudolf Hugo Karl Lamoral Eligius von Thurn und Taxis (1851-1939) from the Bohemian Czech branch of the House of Thurn and Taxis. In 1876 he married Princess Marie Elisabeth Caroline Anne Léopoldine Polyxène Catherine Thérèse Raymonde zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (Venice 1855 - Lautschin 1934) who was one of five children of Egon Karl Franz zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (1819-1865) and Therese Maria Beatrix Countess von Thurn-Hofer and Valsassina (1817-1893). Alexander and Marie had three children: Erich (1876-1952), Eugen (1878-1903) and Alessandro (1881-1937), known as "Sascha". In 1893, the estates were inherited by Princess Marie who enjoyed a high level of cultural education and spoke six languages fluently. She was a socialite and patron of the arts, collected works of art, made acquaintances with artists and ran an exclusive salon in Paris. With its scenic views and Mediterranean climate Duino Castle became a fashionable seaside resort on the Austrian Riviera and is also the place where the well-known Slovene folk legend gend Lepa Vida takes place. Notable guests of the princess included Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and his wife Empress Elisabeth (Sissi), his brother Archduke Maximilian I and his bride Charlotte of Belgium, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the Counts of Chambord. It also hosted famous people in the arts, including Franz Liszt, Gabriele D'Annunzio, the actress Eleonora Duse, Paul Valéry, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, Johann Strauss, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Duino is noted for a tragedy, too. It was the place where the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann committed suicide while vacationing there with his wife and daughter in 1906. The castle, however, is most famous for the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke whom Marie von Turn und Taxis met in 1909 through de Noailles and Kassner. In 1910 she lodged Rilke at her castle in Lautschin, Bohemia, and went on educational trips to Weimar with the insecure poet. While staying at her Duino Castle from 1911 to 1912, he wrote the first two poems in the cycle of what would become his Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies). Upon publication of his ten elegies in 1922, Rilke dedicated the work to Princess Marie, his strict but generous patroness whom he also esteemed as one of his closest friends. After the poet's death, Marie herself published her memories of friendship, which were translated into numerous languages. It is little known to the world, that the Rilke family from Prague was a remote line of the Carantanian stock Rilke which is mentioned in the records going back to 1267. A panoramic footpath along the
coastal road from Trieste and just before Duino, described by
Rilke
as "towering against the sea, like foothills of human existence," was named
Sentiero Rilke (Rilke Trail) in his honor. The entrance to
the trail is just before Duino. The trail stretches for about two
kilometres along the Trieste bay from Sistiana to Duino. The promenade
goes through a wood overhanging the sea and is an interesting mixture of
Mediterranean maquis and Central-Europe vegetation.
A few steps from this paths is the park of the castle, where there are ancient trees, lawns, flowers and aerial architectures, as well as a bunker of the Second World War, an original structure that was excavated in the rock in 1943 by German Kriegsmarine to defend the Sistiana Bay in case of attack by the Allies. Used before as an air-raid shelter, when the war ended it became a fuel deposit for the British Army. The bunker became a museum in 2006. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Duino became part of the Kingdom of Italy. It was merged into the municipality of Duino-Aurisina in 1928. During World War II the castle was used by the Germans who, in 1943, contructed a bunker in the rocks next to the castle to defend the nearby naval base of Sistiana to a possible Allied attack. At the end of and after World War II, the castle served as Headquarters of the British XIII Corps (United Kingdom) under the command of Lt. Gen. Sir John Harding, 1st Baron Harding of Petherton. XIII Corps was part of the combined Allied Mediterranean Theater of Operations under Supreme Allied Commander Lt. Gen. Sir William Duthie Morgan. The British used the bunker as a fuel store.
Until the 1950s, Duino was a predominantly Slovene-speaking village with a sizeable Italian-speaking minority. According to the last Austrian census of 1910, 63.5% of the inhabitants of the town were Slovenes and 25.1% were Italians, while the rest were either German speakers or foreign citizens. The Italian census of 1921 confirmed the Slovene ethnic character of the town, and even showed an increase of the proportion of Slovene speaking population to 78.4%, due mostly to the emigration of Austrians and Germans residing in the town. During the years of the Free Territory of Trieste (1947–1954), however, its ethnic composition changed considerably, as many Istrian Italians fleeing from Istria and other parts of Yugoslavia settled in Duino. Since 1982 the town has been home to United World College (UWC) of the Adriatic attended by students from 80 different countries. It is one of fifteen UWCs around the world and, as such, part of a global educational movement that brings together students from all over the world with the aim to foster peace and international understanding. For a long time the Rilke trail was abandoned but it re-opened after the restoration of the castle in 1987. Duino castle remains property of the Thurn und Taxis family, and is owned today by the great-grandson of Prince Alexander and Princess Marie: Prince Carlo Alessandro della Torre e Tasso, Duke of Castel Duino (1952- ), the only child of Raimundo (son of Alessandro), and Princess Eugénie of Greece and Denmark who had married in 1949 and divorced in 1965. Carlo Alessandro is married to Veronique Lantz, daughter of Gérard Lantz and his wife, Monique Rachet. They have three children: Dimitri, Maximillian, and Constanza. Carlo Alessandro and his family currently reside at Duino Castle.
The village is today a resort area and also host to the Adriatic branch of United World Colleges (UWC), a global educational movement that brings together students from all over the world with the aim to foster peace and international understanding. The school is attended by around 200 mixed-gender students aged between 16 and 19, mostly on full scholarship, from around 90 countries of the world, who study the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, a two-year internationally recognized pre-university program. The College does not have a closed campus. Rather, it is integrated in the village of Duino. Students live in residences that are spread over the village, the smallest houses 6 students, and the largest just over 50. The largest residence, the Foresteria is part of the complex of the Duino castle. The castle is opened to the public as a museum and park. F or a small entrance fee, it is possible to visit more than 18 rooms of the Castle, the 1943 bunker built by the German Kriegsmarine in 1943, and the gardens which tell the long history of the family of the Princes della Torre and Tasso. Andrea Palladio's spiral staircase is a masterpiece of architecture, the 1810 forte-piano played by Liszt is a marvel, and from the bastions above the sea as well as from below the Diocletian tower that dates back to the 3rd century A.D., as well as the Rilke trail, the view of the sea is breathtaking.
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Created: Thursday,
October 13, 2011; Last updated:
Tuesday August 23, 2022
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