It’s no exaggeration to say that what happens at Assicurazioni Generali SpA in the next few months will determine the financial and political map of Italy for years to come – and exert a strong pull on the strategic direction of Europe as a whole. The country’s biggest insurer is the key domino in a matrix of banking deals: Which way it falls will affect most of the other proposed alliances.

Generali’s hometown of Trieste in the northeast corner of Italy is the perfect setting for a decision around which a constellation of corporate deals will turn. This glorious and strange city’s patchwork past echoes the fluid history of European nations – it’s been Austrian, Napoleonic and Balkan, as well as Italian. The next step for the insurer could leave it chained to a fractious past, or open up a bigger, more European future.