San Dorligo della Valle

This is the easternmost comune of the region and of northern Italy: most of its territory lies in Istria, in the valley called the Breg, and a smaller part, to the north, on the Karst plateau. Its border with Trieste is medieval and has never moved. The valley of the Breg was a district of its own inside the diocese of the bishop of Trieste, who was the city's feudal lord, and the line between the comune of Trieste and the district has stayed exactly where it was. The district had its seat in the castle of Moccò, from which it took its name, and it counted ten settlements, listed in the wording of the time: Riçmegne, Gassi, Borst, Breseç, Bagnoli, Preseriani, Creguiani, Sancti Odorici, Sancti Martini and Brde. Of those, Preseriani and Brde have been lost; Gassi is the old name of Log; Sancti Martini is the frazione of Brce; the others have kept their names almost unchanged. In the middle of Dolina stood the mother pieve of the whole Trieste diocese, older than any church in it save the basilica of Muggia Vecchia and the early Christian basilicas of the city; it was dedicated to Sant'Ulderico, and beside it the bishop of Trieste had his own residence. Long before that, two great castellieri watched the mouth of the Val Rosandra from monte San Michele and monte Carso; recent research indicates that the battle in which the Romans were defeated, during the first Istrian campaign, was fought on this very ground. The next year Rome came back and took the whole peninsula, and the valley filled with vines and olives — while the Roman aqueduct of the Val Rosandra, still well preserved, carried fresh water to Tergeste.

In November 1615 the tension between Austria and Venice was about to break. One night a party of Venetian raiders came up quietly to the fortress of San Servolo to take it by surprise; the defence, held by Benvenuto Petazzi, resisted longer than they had expected, so the soldiery turned down into the valley instead and burnt Prebenico, Brce and Dolina — and with Dolina the ancient mother pieve. Then a Venetian ship came to the mouth of the Rosandra to destroy the Trieste salt pans that stood there; reinforcements arrived from Fiume, and in the battle that followed more than two hundred Venetians were left on the field. After that the war of Gradisca could no longer be contained. Moccò had already been destroyed, in 1511, and its work had passed to the castle of San Servolo; in 1632 the lordship of San Servolo was instituted, and its lords built their palace at the foot of Moccò's ruins. As for the name of the comune: the place was called Dolina, which in Slovene means the valley, and Slovene was what almost all its people spoke. A royal decree of 1923 turned it into San Dorligo della Valle — San Dorligo is the Trieste dialect form of Sant'Ulderico, the patron, and «della Valle» is Dolina translated. The Triestine dialect went on saying Dolina all the same, and in 2003 Dolina was adopted as the official name of the settlement in both languages, while the comune keeps the other name in Italian. Every May the village holds the Majenca, its spring feast.