Livorno (Leghorn) is one of the places where my heart resides. Many possible reasons: 1-I have discovered that I was conceived around there, 2-because of its special character, 2- the sea ... and from now on for its history also, which I did not really know nothing about (my bad). I had the opportunity to learn something more by a boat trip between the canals. I went with my little princess, we left school earlier but it was worth it, considering also that Livorno's harbour hosted on that day the fabulous Amerigo Vespucci sail ship, a school for navy officers. It's really rare to find it in Livorno because it's always around the world… so we decided we woudn’t miss the opportunity.
READY TO SAIL!
Our boat trip was scheduled for 3pm, and of course we were late. And like the famous white rabbit, trying to get through the freeway I was like: "How late is it! It is sooo late! ". BUT in the last second we managed to find a parking lot near Piazza Grande (big square), since the tours departed from the nearby tourist office, then we followed the guide that led us to the Scali Finocchietti, in the old merchant quarter, where we climbed on the crimson little boat. We were the only Italians between Germans and French, all over a dozen people. The guide, a blond curled hair girl -quite silent until then- as soon as the boat started the engine, immediately “showed the teeth”, so to speak: she yelled the history of the city and monuments all the way from the neighborhood of Venezia Nuova (New Venice) and back, navigating through the Fossi Medicei (Medicean water canals). Livorno is a very special place, as is its history. It is the multicultural city par excellence, and the echoes of this attitude are still alive today. People who live here now, absorbing the essence, are a breed apart from the rest of Tuscany. A little freaks, I call them. Open, sarcastic, not overly loving rules, quite open minded. I like to say that Livorno is the California of Italy, for that "Hey dude, relax" character of them. But why so? Let’s go back at least 5 centuries and we could find one of the plausible answers.
A CITY WAS BORN
First of all, I would like to point out that by 1100 Countess Matilde of Canossa put her royal knot to intertwine the histories of Livorno and Pisa (later, they became enemies till today… there’s still a famous saying that goes like this: “Meglio un morto in casa che un pisano all’uscio” – It’s better to have a dead body in the house than someone from Pisa knocking at the door - and that says it all). Anyway, the countess gave Leghorn’s old fortified center to the Opera of the Duomo of Pisa. After this necessary premise, we can go on with the story. Livorno, a small fishing village under the wing of Pisa and then Genoa, was sold in 1421 by the Genoese to Florentines, after the genoans conquered the old enemy, Pisa. A hundred years later, Ferdinando I de' Medici - Florence's lord at the time - suffering from the lack of a port on the sea for Florence and the Grand Duchy, so he decided to do a smart move, promoting Livorno to Royal port. Its was a systematic decision: it would have made Livorno a fortified city, with the help of exceptional architects such as Bernardo Buontalenti, who designed the Fortezza Nuova (New Fortress, so called to distinguish it from the pre-existing Old Fortress, by Giuliano da Sangallo ), also called the Buontalentian Pentagon, with ramparts at every vertex and a ditch/canal system that isolated the city from the outside – especially from the pirates and the Saracens – and at the same time would connect it to the outside.
Our itinerary circumnavigates the Old Fortress, then the New Fortress, while the guide continues the story of Leghorn's growth from village to town and partly reveals the reason for multiculturalism and the open character of the inhabitants.
At the end of the fifteenth century, the city was ready to call for inhabitants, and what would it be a better call than an amnesty? Our friend Ferdinand I, once more had a brilliant idea. He promulgated the Leggi Livornine (Leghorn Laws), which invited traders and merchants from all over the world to settle in the city. In return, they could get all their debts and all criminal convictions erased, albeit with some exceptions: murder and falsification of money. We can only imagine for how many people this chance was a bait, primarily to all Sephardic Jewish merchants who were expelled from Spain and Portugal because of the Spanish Inquisition… They got in Livorno, settled down and started trading, and Ferdinand built them a real neighborhood, not a ghetto, with lots of cemeteries and places of worship.
More traders from all over Europe and the Middle East followed: Dutch, Germans, Greeks, Spaniards, Levantines, Persians, and every society carried their religious, historical, cultural, culinary and linguistic traditions. In a short time, the city gained so many merchants, so a new neighborhood outside the New Fortress was needed. The Venezia Nuova district was built by Venetian workers who reproduced Venetian types of buildings for the newborn neighborhood, with underwater foundations and access to the cellars and warehouses either directly by the water or by slips from the street floor called "scalandroni". A canal was also excavated from Livorno directly to Pisa, called Navicelli, which allowed a much easier transport of goods. Several scalandroni can be still seen today, passing through New Venice and many merchant palaces. We also saw the Dutch Church, one of many dedicated to non-Catholic cults.
Prior to the construction of temples and churches, foreigners living in Livorno went to pray to the Church of Our Lady, still in use in the pedestrian zone.
All in all we make real discoveries: it is not the same thing to see a city from the road or of from the water. Literally another point of view, hence another world. In the next post, following the second part of the tour, the newest town and also the beautiful Vespucci Ship, which we visited inside. A really strong emotion!
