Photo: Tiesse · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Museo postale e telegrafico della Mitteleuropa

Museum in the Palazzo delle Poste of Trieste on the history of the post, telegraphy and philately, with a reconstruction of a late 19th-century post office.

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About the museum

The museum arose in 1995 from an idea shared with the municipality of Trieste, to document the postal history of the city, the region and neighbouring countries, and it has been open to the public since 1997. Since 2001 it has been part of the Civici Musei di storia e arte di Trieste (Civic Museums of History and Art of Trieste); its management is shared between Poste Italiane and the municipality.

It is on the ground floor of the Palazzo delle Poste, in Piazza Vittorio Veneto, in the Borgo Teresiano, near Trieste Centrale station. The neo-Renaissance building was designed by Friedrich Setz and built between 1890 and 1894.

The display illustrates the evolution of the postal service from the mid-19th century to the present, with particular attention to the period of Austrian administration: the post, with objects, forms and documents; telegraphy, with equipment from various periods; postal cartography; and military post, with the equipment of a field office. In an octagonal space a late 19th-century post office has been reconstructed, while one room is dedicated, in alternating periods, to collections of postal history and philately. At the entrance a fragment of the laboratory ship Elettra of Guglielmo Marconi is displayed.

Highlights

Reconstruction of a late 19th-century post office
Field post office for military mail
Telegraph equipment from various periods
Fragment of Marconi's ship Elettra
Collections of postal history and philately