The cities, the Empress and the urban spaces: An introduction

In the context of crisis of the humanities and because of the difficulties experienced by history and historians in the last decades, historians have sought and proposed many solutions for their discipline1. Public History is one of these solutions and it is a new discipline that, starting from the United States, has the goal of communicating history to the general public in non-academic ways and settings. In fact, Public History aims at encouraging the use of history and at allowing easier access to the discipline, elaborating a kind of ‘history for everyone’. The project underlying this publication forced us to reflect on these issues. In the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of Maria Theresa, it all started with the direct and constructive incentive of the Trieste city administration. Moreover, the tercentenary is, without any doubt, an event that could to involve the public and the citizens more than ever. The project, therefore, had the need to tell the city and its inhabitants something about themselves. It is our attempt to provide citizens with the tools to