Before World War I, when Trieste was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italian-speaking population strongly supported the idea of building a university in the town, but Austrian authorities repeatedly rejected the proposal.

In the same year, the construction of a new building to house the faculties began on the Scoglietto hill, in a position dominating the Old City.

The building, which still hosts the directive board and some faculties, was designed by architects Raffaello Fagnoni and Umberto Nordio.

To celebrate, the university awarded the President of the Italian Republic Luigi Einaudi a honoris causa degree in Economy and Commerce.

Other buildings in the campus host the faculties of Economics, Pharmacy, Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences, Engineering, the Medical Institutes of Microbiology and Physiology, the towing tank, the Data Processing Centre, the Department of Chemical Sciences and the Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Macromolecular Chemistry.

In the heart of the city near the seafront, the old buildings of Via dell'Università and Via del Lazzaretto vecchio house the Department of Humanities, while the Narodni Dom* houses the Section of Studies in Modern Languages for Interpreting and Translation, the first advanced school of for interpreters and translators in Italy.

Far from the city centre, near the ICTP (International Centre for Theoretical Physics) there is the Department of Theoretical Physics, in the village of Miramare-Grignano, while the Department of Astronomy is housed near Trieste's two Astronomical Observatories: on San Vito hill and on the karst plateau, in Basovizza.

Particularly, in the Pordenone campus, there are undergraduate and graduate programs in Engineering and Education, while the Gorizia campus offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in International and Diplomatic Studies (part of the Faculty of Political Sciences) and three first-level degree: Business communication and human resource management, Economics and tourism management, Territorial policy.