TOMMASINI IN THE CIVIL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF TRIESTE. At the end of the XVIII century
Trieste was a small town with a population of about 30.000 inhabitans. The father of Tommasini came to Trieste in 1781 as a consul of the granducate of Tuscany and Muzio Tommasini was born in Trieste in 1794. He studied in Trieste, Ljubljana (as a pupil of the well known botanist Hladnik) and Vienna where he was in contact whith Host (the Author of the fundamental Flora Austriaca, 1827-1831) but finally he became a doctor in law and performed his civil career as a magistrate. Appointed to the government in 1827, Tommasini was particularly for two decades; concerned with the sanitary problems of the impetuously growing town at the same time he explored throroughly the local flora, collected an important herbarium and published the results of several botanical investigations. After the introduction of the constitution in 1850 Tommasini was elected as the first Mayor of the town and occupied this role until 1861. In these years the town developed as the principal trade centre of the Austrian Empire and the population grew to 100.000 people; otherwise the political success hindered Tommasini from elaborating a synthetic work about the flora and vegetation of the Illyrian region.
