Castle of Duino Information

- from 9.30 to 12.30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays Possibility to book after hours for groups. Dimora privata dei Principi della Torre e Tasso (von Thurn und Taxis), il Castello di Duino aperto al pubblico dal 1 luglio 2003. Da marzo fino a fine ottobre aperto tutti i giorni, tranne il marted. Incantevole location per eventi, il Castello di Duino si trova alle porte di Trieste, immerso nella natura tra storia, cultura e nobiltà. In 1912, Austrian-Bohemian writer and poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) began to write portions of his famous work, the Duino Elegies, while visiting Duino Castle as a guest of the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (born Princess von Hohenlohe). While walking along the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic Sea near the Castle, Rilke claimed to hear a voice calling to him speaking the words of the first line: Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?), which he quickly wrote in his notebook. Within days, he produced drafts of the first two elegies in the series (of ten) and drafted passages and fragments that would later be incorporated into later elegies, including the opening passage of the 10th elegy. The Duino Elegies are recognised by critics and scholars as his most important work and one of the chief transitional works between the apex of German Romanticism and Modernist poetry. They are ten intensely religious, mystical poems that weigh beauty and existential suffering. Rilke finished the work in Switzerland after a ten-year period where depression and an existential crisis rendered him unable to continue writing. Upon publication in 1922, Rilke dedicated the work to the Princess, who he esteemed as one of his greatest patrons and closest friends. The Bunker of the Castle of Duino has an area of 400 square metres and is 18 metres deep. It was constructed in 1943 by the forced-labour organisation TODT for the German navy to defend the naval base of Sistiana against a possible ...