Grand Hotel Duchi d'Aosta

There has been an inn on this corner of Trieste since the 1300s, when the Hospitium Magnum put up travellers beside the customs house; the present building arrived in 1873, commissioned by Assicurazioni Generali, whose palazzo still eyes the hotel from across the square. And what a square: Piazza Unità d'Italia, the great Habsburg drawing room that opens straight onto the Adriatic, with the hotel holding the best seat in it. Trieste has always been more Vienna than Venice, and the Duchi d'Aosta obliges — Central European interiors, a Roman-style spa below stairs, and coffee taken with Triestine seriousness. 37 rooms, emperors and Casanova in the visitors' book, and the only address in town that matters.