In 1838 a very steep sandstone staircase connected the current Piazza Goldoni in Trieste with the Montuzza hill. Some steps reached 50-60 centimetres in height: so much so that it was thought that they were built for gigantic men. From that curiosity was born the name of one of the most singular places in Trieste, later transformed into a monumental urban work.
There are cities that you understand by looking at the palaces. Others following the course of a river. To understand Trieste, sometimes, you just have to try to climb it. Because Trieste is not a city that stands still at sea level. It starts from the Banks, stretches around the port and the large squares, then suddenly changes inclination. The roads begin to climb towards San Giusto, San Vito, Scorcola and the other heights. Ramps, climbs and stairways appear. One of them has a name that seems to have come from a fairy tale: Stairway of the Giants. It’s not an exaggeration invented to attract tourists. There is a very concrete reason behind that name. In the nineteenth century some of its steps could reach a height of 50 or even 60 centimetres. Try to imagine facing them every day. More than a ladder, it must have looked like climbing.
1838 – an almost impossible staircase is born
The story begins in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1833, a road was opened to connect Piazza della Legna, now Piazza Goldoni, with Monte della Fornace, later known as Colle di Montuzza. The elevation gain was significant and the climb was difficult. Five years later, in 1838, a sandstone staircase was built. The intention was to make the connection easier. The result, at least according to contemporary parameters, was rather singular. The staircase was steep and had huge steps. Historical reconstructions speak of heights between 50 and 60 centimetres. This is where the popular name came from. That couldn’t have been a ladder for normal people. It was supposed to be a Giants’ Ladder.
Don’t look for 60-centimeter steps today
However, a clarification is necessary. Anyone arriving in Trieste today after hearing this story and looking for the famous sixty-centimeter-high step will be disappointed. The current staircase is not the one from 1838. The first Giants’ Staircase was profoundly transformed at the beginning of the twentieth century during one of the most important phases of the city’s urban development. The name survived the original structure and was inherited by the monumental staircase that still dominates the area above Piazza Goldoni today.
A city that grew too fast
At the beginning of the twentieth century Trieste was one of the most important cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The port had fueled extraordinary economic and population growth for decades. Traders, workers, entrepreneurs, officials, and communities from different areas of the Empire and the Mediterranean had helped build a cosmopolitan city. But growth posed a very real problem: moving. The center was to be connected to the new working-class neighborhoods and industrial areas that developed on the heights and towards San Giacomo and San Sabba. The conformation of the terrain did not make the operation easy.
Cross the hill
The solution was radical: instead of just continuing to climb, it was decided to pass under the hill. In the early twentieth century, new road tunnels were built capable of improving connections between the centre and the expanding districts. Of particular importance among these was the Scipione de Sandrinelli tunnel, built under Montuzza and also intended for the passage of electric trams. The tunnel completely changed the layout of the area. And the old Giants’ Ladder had to make room for something new.
Berlams redesign the climb
The project for the new monumental arrangement was entrusted to Ruggero Berlam and his son Arduino, two fundamental names in Trieste architecture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their solution was not limited to reconstructing a ladder. He transformed the urban difference in height into a true architectural scenography. Symmetrical and curved ramps, terraces and observation points developed above the entrance to the gallery. The new Giants’ Staircase simultaneously became a pedestrian link, monument and belvedere.
The city above, the city below
This is perhaps the most fascinating feature of the place. Two different motion systems coexist at the same point. The road passes below, penetrating the hill. Pedestrians climb above. The tunnel belongs to the modern city that wants to cross the obstacle quickly. The staircase, on the other hand, belongs to the city which has yet to physically measure itself with the difference in altitude. An engineering solution and an architectural solution are superimposed in the same space.
Trieste is a vertical city
The Giants’ Ladder is not an isolated episode. Trieste has an urban geography in which the stairways have always played a fundamental role. From the sea the land rises rapidly towards the Karst and the surrounding hills. Many neighborhoods are connected through ramps and pedestrian paths that shorten otherwise much longer journeys. For a Triestine, a ladder can simply be the most direct route home. For those coming from a flat city it can quickly turn into an athletic test.
The stairs as streets
This is an important distinction. An urban staircase does not necessarily originate as a monument. Before she becomes beautiful, she must be useful. Connect two quotas. Shorten a distance. It allows you to cross a neighborhood. Trieste has many precisely because its urban growth has continually had to contend with the slope. Some are short. Others seem never-ending. Some pass through residential areas. Others suddenly offer a view of the gulf.
The city is discovered by going up
It is one of the most interesting ways to visit Trieste. Leave the classic route between Piazza Unità d’Italia, Canal Grande, and Rive for a few hours and begin climbing. The perspective changes almost immediately. The sea appears between two buildings. A seemingly ordinary road ends in front of a panorama. The roofs are lowered under the gaze and the port becomes progressively legible in its entirety. It’s a city that rewards hard work.
Piazza Goldoni, the starting point
The Scala dei Giganti starts in the Piazza Goldoni area, one of the busiest hubs in the city center. It is precisely this contrast that makes it interesting. Cars, buses, shops, and urban movement coexist with a structure that recounts nearly two centuries of transformation. Just start the climb for the relationship with the square to change. A few meters of elevation gain is enough to look down on what was around us just before.
Towards San Giusto
Continuing uphill you enter the Trieste which leads towards the hill of San Giusto, the historic nucleus of the city. This is where urban history becomes much older than the Ladder of Giants. On the hill are the Cathedral of San Giusto and the Castle, while a little further down emerges the Roman Theatre. Walking through this part of the city means crossing different eras in the space of a few hundred meters.
The Roman Theatre at the foot of the modern city
The Roman Theatre represents one of the most extraordinary contrasts in Trieste. Built between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century AD, today it appears nestled within the contemporary city. When it was built, the coastline was much closer. Over the centuries the theatre gradually disappeared beneath the buildings and was fully brought to light in the twentieth century. Seeing it after descending from the heights means understanding how much Trieste is made up of layers.
San Giusto, where it all begins
On the hill of San Giusto is the oldest nucleus of the city. Here the Roman, medieval and later presence overlaps. The cathedral dominates the hill with its characteristic facade and large rose window. Next door, the castle recalls the city’s long strategic history. From up there the relationship between Trieste and the sea becomes evident. The port is not an accessory element. It is the very reason why the city has become what we know.
Descend towards the sea
Then you can take the opposite path. From the hill you slowly return towards the center. The stairways become cornices. At the end of the streets a blue stripe appears. The lower you go, the more the sea grows. It is one of the most typically Trieste urban experiences: starting from a height from which the gulf seems like a panorama and arriving a few minutes later almost at the water level.
A city between different worlds
La Scala dei Giganti also tells something about the character of Trieste. This is an Italian city that for centuries lived within a much larger cultural space. It was a port of the Habsburgs, a meeting point between the Latin, Germanic, Slavic and Jewish worlds, a place of trade and migration. Its architecture speaks different languages. Neoclassical, eclecticism, Liberty and rationalism coexist at a short distance. Even a staircase can become the result of this complex urban culture.
The Trieste of Svevo, Saba and Joyce
Then there are the writers. Few Italian cities possess such a profound relationship with literature. Italo Svevo observed the commercial bourgeoisie of Trieste, transforming it into narrative matter. Umberto Saba made the city a recognizable poetic presence, also made up of streets, hills and suburbs. James Joyce spent key years of his education in Trieste. Here he taught English, wrote, frequented cafes and met Svevo. Walking through Trieste inevitably means crossing this literary geography as well.
Fatigue as an urban measure
Perhaps a writer himself would have been able to appreciate the irony of the old Giants’ Ladder. A link built to facilitate the climb that required climbing steps of half a meter. But the episode does a good job of chronicling an era in which standards, accessibility, and public space design met very different criteria than they do today. What would appear unfeasible today could be considered an acceptable urban solution.
Sixty centimeters
Try to measure them. Sixty centimeters is just under the height of a normal table. A contemporary step generally has enormously smaller dimensions. Imagining lifting your leg repeatedly to overcome steps of that size allows you to immediately understand why the people of Trieste chose that name. No official documents or communication campaigns were needed. You only had to walk it once: that was the ladder of giants.
The name survives the stones
The old structure has disappeared. The giant steps are gone. Yet the name has remained. It’s perhaps the most beautiful detail in all of history. Cities possess a memory that does not necessarily coincide with what survives materially. A building can be demolished and continue to live in the name of a street. A function can disappear and remain in a toponym. A staircase can be completely reconstructed and retain the nickname created to describe the previous one.
Urban memory works like this
It’s not as precise as an archive. Select, transform, simplify. Generations of Trieste residents continued to call that place Scala dei Giganti even when the gigantic steps no longer existed. The name has become stronger than the structure that generated it. Today, millions of people can learn about history precisely because of those three words.
Not just a curiosity
Reducing everything to the strangeness of the 60 centimetre steps would be a shame though. La Scala dei Giganti tells the story of at least three different Triestis. The nineteenth-century one that tried to connect the center with the heights. The one in the early twentieth century that built tunnels and tram lines to support urban growth. And the contemporary one, which inherits these infrastructures and must decide how to conserve and integrate them into daily life.
The heritage we use every day
It is an important theme for many Italian cities. Not all heritage is behind an entrance fee. There are bridges, stairs, markets, stations, and infrastructure that we continue to use without realizing their history. They are works born to serve a concrete function and which, precisely by continuing to carry it out, remain alive.
Looking at Trieste from a step
Next time you arrive in Trieste, it’s worth leaving the sea behind for a moment and heading towards Piazza Goldoni. Then look up. The Giants’ Ladder is there. The current one won’t force anyone to climb two-foot-high steps. Fortunately. But as you climb you can imagine the old sandstone steps from 1838 and the inhabitants who faced them to reach Montuzza.
Someone, almost two centuries ago, looked at those steps and decided they couldn’t have been meant for normal men. He called them “Giants”. The joke became a name. The name became part of the city. And this is how, sometimes, a monument is born: not from what an architect decides to call it, but from what a city decides to remember.
