The ‘National Shrine of Mary Mother and Queen’ is a sanctuary built between 1963 and 1965 on a project by Professor Antonio Guacci, a brutalist-style architect, and it is one of the first buildings in concrete, glass and iron, modular and self-supporting.
It was built on the initiative of Antonio Santin, Bishop of Trieste and Koper since 1938. During World War II he made a vow to erect a church if Trieste was saved from total destruction. The city was saved and in 1959 Pope John XXIII gave his permission to build a pilgrims’ church devoted to the Holy Mary as a symbol of peace and unity among all peoples. The temple is also a memorial of four events: the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (13th September 1959), the salvation of Trieste (30th April 1945), the memory of fallen and missing soldiers (1945) and the memory of the Italian exodus from Istria and Dalmatia.
The temple, with its two superimposed churches, was designed with the canons of classical beauty: the golden section, the triangle of Euler and the proportions of mathematics. The module used is the isosceles triangle, a geometric figure giving great stability to the structure. The design is simple, yet powerful: there are no decorations, everything is restrained to what is necessary. Power is added to the structure by repeating the ‘beehive’ design from the monument’s base to its apex.
The building’s location is a key feature, high on the mountainside – the Karst Plateau – overlooking the city of Trieste and the Adriatic Sea.
The temple was inaugurated in 1966 and it underwent some restoration works on its 50th anniversary, also thanks to the contribution of the Samer family, persisting over time.
