The Morpurgo family was a prominent player in the 19th century Trieste, a bustling commercial port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the economic, cultural, social, and charitable fields. Its roots, however, go back much further: even before the expulsion of the Jews, around 1470, Aron, called The Rich, moved from the increasingly unfavourable Maribor to the more hospitable Trieste. His descendants adopted the characteristic surname Marpurgo/Morpurgo/Marpurger in their new environment. In the 16th century, a branch of the family from Trieste settled in Gradisca d’Isonzo and Gorizia, and from there to the cities of northern and central Italy, later to Vienna and Krakow, and in the 18th century to Split.

The history of this family connects Maribor and Trieste, as is also confirmed by the novel “Marpurgi” by the writer Zlata Vokač Medic, the fourth reprint of which became the reason for the exhibition, which will be on display in the atrium of the Slovenian Permanent Theatre in Trieste from 7 March. The exhibition was set up in 2021 by the Maribor Library and the Synagogue Maribor, when the SNG staged the premiere of the opera “Marpurgi” by Nina Šenk, directed by Igor Pison from Trieste. All these threads led to the exhibition’s visit to the city chosen by the Morpurgo family and where they lived for several centuries.

The luxurious Trieste apartment of the family in Imbriani Street is today a museum, as the heirs left it to the Municipality in 1941 (due to the new ownership and purpose, the apartment was preserved in almost its original form despite the looting of the homes of the persecuted representatives of the Jewish community at the time).

The authors of the exhibition are the director of the Synagogue Maribor Boris Hajdinjak and the director of the Maribor Library Klemen Brvar. The exhibition opening will be on Friday, 7 March 2025, at 7:00 PM in the entrance hall in the presence of the director of the SSG Danijel Malalan.