Eighty-seven thousand square meters located behind the city, between Basovizza, Padriciano and Miramare, makes Trieste a fundamental pillar in scientific research not only in Italy, but all over the world. A system that was born in 1982 and has grown more and more in terms of surfaces, staff and laboratories to give birth to the body that is today the SIS, the Trieste Scientific Information System, also known as “Trieste System”. It includes the University of Trieste, the Research Area (known as AREA SciencePark), the only Sincrotron of Italy, the Electra, the OGS (Observatory of Experimental Geophysics) attached to the now abandoned Laboratory of Marine Biology , The Sissa (Advanced International School of Advanced Studies) and the ICTP (International Center for Theoretical Physics, dedicated to the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam). A little curiosity about the ICTP: every time you enter this center, you go abroad; In fact, since the ICTP is an international environment, it does not belong to any state and is open 365 days a year.
We can call Trieste as the “City of Science”. In fact, Trieste is the European city with the highest number of researchers per thousand inhabitants, 37.1 ‰ (data referring to 2005) and Trieste has also the highest number of scientific institutions in Italy , thus becoming, together with Pisa, one of the two major research centers in our country.
Trieste organizes scientific events such as “Open Day”, “The Night of the Researchers” and the “Miramare Science Campus Open
Day”.
The first one covers a whole day during which the laboratories and research centers of Padriciano, Basovizza and Borgo Grotta Gigante, where the OGS is located, are open to the public, allowing visitors, upon reservation, to enter in contact with some of the machines of the laboratories and to learn about their operations and ongoing experiments through thematic paths with
researchers as guides who lead visitors within scientific structures, providing explanations and answers to their curiosity.
During ” The Night of Researchers ”, researchers entertain visitors from mid-afternoon to almost midnight with scientific demonstrations, explanations of various kinds and offering the chance to try some simple experiments on the field. All in the
frame of Piazza dell’Unità d’Italia and its surroundings.
For those who are interested in Physics, there is the “Miramare Science Campus Open Day”. The event is divided between the Miramare Scientific Imaginary, the SISSA and the ICTP, and offers conferences about Mathematics and Physics and the opportunity to attend some experiments presented at the mentioned buildings.
Three manifestations with the goal of making citizens aware that science is not an abstract and distant thing, but something that belongs to everyone and everyone can know.
