TRIESTE When the exchange for the single number 112 was activated in the region, in Palmanova, the operators found themselves having to deal with a request that immediately highlighted one of the critical points of the new system: «Send an ambulance to Luminosa immediately». A destination unknown to a Friulian, to anyone who does not live in our city. «In which street, at which house number?», the operator insisted on asking, with the Trieste native in emergency who had felt lost, because when someone says «meet me at Luminosa» in Trieste there is no need to give any other explanations .
This is to frame the scope of the next complete redevelopment of that building in via Carducci, built in its original version even before the Second World War – the current one was built in the 1980s – by the General Advertising Company, precisely as a tool for advertising promotion and to make known the programs and timetables of theatres, cinemas and ballrooms.
The news of the imminent change, with the installation of a more modern structure both from an architectural and technological point of view, has aroused debate and curiosity among the people of Trieste, bringing back memories that belong to youth and adolescence. Given the attention that this news has attracted in the city, our newspaper has decided to launch an initiative to collect all these memories: readers who wish to share them can write to us in the form below, sending anecdotes and historical photos of the Luminosaor also by email to our newspaperat the address [email protected]. Then we will publish them.
«It marked my generation – he testifies Massimo Calabrese, owner of the hairdressing salon in Via San Francesco “Le Gallerie di Maxim” – given that as a child, although a sign forbade children from using the button panel, I enjoyed pressing the buttons and, enchanted, then looked at the map that it illuminated, while as a young man I used that spot as a meeting place with friends.” Back then «there was no mobile phone – underlines Calabrese, now 62 years old – and I, who lived in Piazza Venezia, went down to the telephone booth under the house, inserted the token, called friends at home to agree on the appointment time, obviously to Luminosa. From there we then moved towards the rest of the most popular areas in those years.”
Trieste says goodbye to the historic Luminosa: it will soon be replaced by the interactive version
Laura Tonero
April 26, 2024
Because at Luminosa «we found the timetables of the cinemas – Calabrese specifies – but also the advertising of parties and special evenings, dancing, at the Triestina Gymnastics, at the Edera and then in the discos such as Re Nudo or the Paradiso».
There are commercial activities that have grown with Luminosa, such as VisionOttica, which the Pellaschiar family opened in via Carducci in 1957. «It is a symbolic place of the city, it was especially so for people who were no longer very young – notes the owner Elena Pellaschiar – which has always been useful to us also for giving precise information on the location of the store to new customers.”
A few steps from Luminosa there is the Royal bar «which my family has managed since 1969 – he recalls Mattia Pangos, current owner – when that structure was truly a strategic meeting point.” Pangos, 43 years old, on the other hand has “experienced more closely the slow state of abandonment into which, over the years, the structure has fallen, which thus no longer has any attraction”. –
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