Livorno Audio Tours

Livorno was a fishing village until 1593, when the Medici family decided to build a new port city from scratch and make it a free port open to all religions, nationalities, and refugees. The resulting city attracted Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal, Dutch merchants, Greek Orthodox traders, Armenians, English Quakers, and North African Muslims, all living under a remarkably tolerant charter called the Livornina. For two centuries, Livorno was the most cosmopolitan city in the Mediterranean, which explains the neighborhood called Venezia Nuova, a grid of canals and bridges modeled on Venice but used as a working waterfront rather than a showpiece.

Amedeo Modigliani was born here in 1884.

Pietro Mascagni wrote Cavalleria Rusticana here. The city produced cacciucco, one of the great fish stews of Italy, made with at least five types of seafood and served over toasted bread rubbed with garlic, in a version that is saltier and more intense than any Tuscan cousin. The waterfront market in the Piazza della Repubblica still sells the day's catch early in the mornings in a way that the tourist-facing ports further north have long since abandoned.