Bagno Fontana was one of the first and most famous bathing establishments in Trieste, officially inaugurated in 1890 at the end of the city waterfront, in the Sacchetta area. It takes its name from Carlo Ottavio Fontana (1837-1896), an influential municipal councilor and wealthy landowner of eighteenth-century origins, who purchased the area from a previous proposer and developed the activity.
Origins
The origins of the establishment date back to May 1889, when the businessman Antonio Rocco obtained permission for a free beach, initially intended for military use. In less than a year, the project passed to Fontana, who transformed the place into a paid bathing establishment, intended for an elegant and bourgeois public. It distinguished itself for its luxurious offer compared to the more popular free baths on the rocks called "cape".
During the Habsburg period
During the Habsburg period, marked by an economic and cultural growth of the city, the Bagno Fontana represented a symbol of social transformations and of triestino leisure time. It was equipped with:
- tubs for hot baths and fresh water;
- a restaurant.
It enjoyed a direct connection with the city center through a horse-drawn tram line established in 1896, testifying to its importance and the spread of a quality bourgeois and military tourism.
In literature
The establishment also appears in significant literary works, such as a poem by James Joyce and in the stories of Scipio Slataper, where it represents a vibrant scenario of social life among locals and foreign visitors during the first half of the twentieth century.
The first post-war period
The first post-war period brought significant urban changes: the Bagno Fontana area was affected by land reclamation works for the realization of the Transalpina Railway Station. These works caused the definitive demolition of the establishment, marking the end of an era of nineteenth-century bathing establishments, later replaced by other forms of sea usage in the context of modern Trieste.
Legacy
Despite its physical disappearance, the Bagno Fontana remains an important testimony of the Habsburg Trieste, of its tourist-cultural development and of the significant transformations that characterized the city between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The history of this establishment is also a cross-section of social dynamics, where the army, the bourgeoisie, and the triestina maritime culture intertwine.