There is a Color Plan for Trieste

If you live in the downtown area or in any other area of Trieste that has historical significance, your home or building will be protected by the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio del Friuli Venezia Giulia. In short, if you want to change anything with the outside of your building, you are going to have to go through some serious planning and red tape. 

I probably told you we are doing work on a new house. Well, one of the things we are doing is changing the windows and the doors. The old ones are made of wood, so if we want to change the windows, no problem, as long as the new ones are made of wood. If you want to change the material (like PVC or whatever they're using these days), they have to look like wood. We checked out that possibility thinking that new wooden windows would be a lot more expensive. It turns out they weren't that much more and had a much longer guarantee than the fake wood PVC ones. Great. Go for those.

But then we wanted to change the shudders. Still wood, mind you, but a different style. Turns out, what we have are "Scuri alla Triestina," which have horizontal slats that you can open and close or aim up or down. We want to change to what we now know is called "Scuri alla Veneta," or solid blocks of wood with vertical lines that simply open or close. Who knew that shudders would be so important that you would need to create a "progetto" with an architect and take it to the correct office (and pay the expensive tax stamp) in order to give your pad an upgrade!

I have to say, it did give me a little insight into why so many of the buildings I see around are a bit decrepit-- let's just say that after all of the paperwork, I realized it wasn't just "La Crisi." Leaving things crappy is a hell of a lot cheaper and less stressful than what it takes to make even (what I would consider) a small change (for the better).

But enough of my grumbling. What I really want to tell you about is that I visited the office in San Dorligo where the first step in the process happens (we are a different municipality than Trieste, but all the paperwork ends up in Trieste and then in the Region eventually). What surprised me was that there actually is a reason for all of this careful consideration. The idea is that things should stay the way they always were to preserve the characteristics of what makes Trieste (or San Giuseppe or any other part of town) Trieste. There is a reason that Shudders are called Triestine shudders. For one thing, they were invented in Trieste (for a good example, check out the Ferdinandeo building) according to the needs of Triestine homes and the quirky weather (the BORA) you find here. In fact, lots of cities in Trieste have their own kinds of shudders (Padova, Vincenza, etc).

Besides that, if you want to paint your house, you can go to any paint store and ask for the color pantone for Trieste and they actually have it.

So the big surprise in all of this is that THERE ACTUALLY IS A MASTER PLAN. Good to know.