by John Keahey
The ferry arrived thirty minutes late. Passengers waiting to board with me said the woman in the ticket office said the tardiness was because of the rough seas. But it arrived, and it definitely was going back to Livorno. I climbed aboard, found a comfortable chair inside the cabin, and dozed off for a few minutes until being awoken by the ferry’s twisting in the water, its bow rising and plunging. I am weak-kneed when it comes to seasickness. I had no sea legs as I stumbled across the shifting deck to purchase an Italian roll and a double espresso, figuring that would ease my nausea. It did, and I made the three-hour journey—the rough seas added thirty minutes to the transit—in more or less good shape. I scrambled down the ferry’s ramp, walked to the ticket office at the Port of Livorno, and asked the clerk about ferries departing in the evening for Elba.
She told me what I had prepared myself to hear: I would have to take the train to Piombino, a short distance down the coast. The sea was expected to remain rough for another day, perhaps two, and she could not guarantee that ferries would be making the trip from Piombino.
That settled it. I had three days left before I had to return to my base at Pietrasanta, and I needed to decide how best to spend them. I had driven through Livorno a few months earlier and appreciated the clean look of the city and its port. It was obvious that a lot of it was postwar construction or restoration, given the major damage to the port and the city on its fringes during Allied bombing in World War II. My traveling companion Filippo Tofani had told me during that first drive through that there was a section of the city that had canals “like Venice!” That had intrigued me.
I thanked the clerk for the information, walked to the nearest bus stop, and made my way into the city. The bus stopped in front of a decent-looking hotel, the Giappone Inn, on Via Grande, the main avenue. It had a basic, reasonably priced room, including breakfast. I would explore Livorno for the next few days and head north to Pietrasanta on the third day. It was a decision that paid off, as I discovered a city full of history, explored the neighborhood connected by canals, and ate at one of the finest restaurants I had ever visited in Italy.
* * *
I knew I had to check out Livorno’s canals, built, according to local legend, in the 1500s by Venetian craftsmen hired by Livorno’s Medici rulers. As someone who believes the only way to really absorb Venice is to observe it from the water, I have spent a lot of time on the canals there—as a passenger on both private boats and vaporetti, or water buses. I wanted to see Livorno in the same way—from the water.
However, I have to admit that I am skeptical about the connection of these canals with Venetian craftsmen. The only references to this involvement in building the canals are found in guidebooks—notorious for taking some urban legends as fact and for copying one another—and from the Livornese tour guide who led a small group of visitors on a late-afternoon canal cruise. Academic studies of Livorno mention the canals but not the Venetians. These water people from Italy’s northeast crescent created canals out of small streams flowing between low, muddy islands in the center of their lagoon. In Livorno, the canals and the moat around the new fort were dug out of the earth, and Tuscany had plenty of skilled people who could do the digging and line the canal walls with tightly fitting stone blocks. Meanwhile, the myth of the Venetian connection persists and remains an interesting story to pass on to tourists.
The canals are located in what is known, rightly or wrongly, as Livorno’s “Venetian Quarter.” They spill out in an arc along the south edge of the city’s historic center. These long, lanky bodies of water do not dominate the lives of Livornesi (or, as they are sometimes called, “Labronici”) like they do Venetians’. People do not use them to get around the city, as there are plenty of streets full of cars, buses, and pedestrian walkways for that purpose.
Boats are tied up at narrow docks built along tall stone embankments where they await owners who will head out to sea for pleasure or to fish. Boat-repair shops are dug into the sides of the walls, along with an occasional coffee bar or tiny food establishment. Tourist-filled boats ply this network of waters, which connects the city’s original ancient port with a fifteenth-century Fortezza Nuova, or “New” Castle, built by the then-Florentine rulers.
Pisa, in the Middle Ages, first controlled the city, building at the harbor’s edge the original fortress, the “Old Fort,” around an eleventh-century tower that had been constructed by Countess Matilda of Tuscany. Then, in the early 1400s, Genoa, victorious in one of its many battles with Pisa, took control of Livorno.
A few years later, Genoa sold the small port town, known then as Portus Liburni, to the Florentines. They wanted it because Livorno gave inland Florence an outlet to the sea and would contribute to its growing dominance over Pisa. It was the grand dukes of the Medici family who get credit for transforming Livorno “from a sleepy fishing village into one of the great centres of Mediterranean trade,” historian David Abulafia tells us in his history of the Mediterranean, The Great Sea.
A succession of Medici rulers over the next century took the once-small fishing village to new heights. Today, Matilda’s rebuilt tower and a few remnants of stone walls remain of the original fort, built by the Pisans. The fortress was replaced by what is known today as Fortezza Vecchia, or Old Fort.
The Medici also had a canal dredged several miles to the north that connected Livorno to the Arno River near Pisa. Just a few decades following the Old Fort’s construction, a new fort was built farther inland but still within the city’s walls. This is known today as Fortezza Nuova. The canal system, whether actually built by Venetian craftsmen or local craftsmen, was created to tie the new fort to the old fort, a half mile away at Livorno’s harbor.
The main canal connecting the two forts opens into the original docking area where today Italian Coast Guard ships are moored, along with boats belonging to a squadron of customs police.
The name of this docking area—Darsena Vecchia, “Old Wet-docks”—shows the influence of Muslim culture along the Italian coastline. Darsena is an Italian-language modification of Dār al-Sinā’a, the Arabic word for docks. If the D is dropped and the word is further Italianized with the addition of -le, it becomes arsenale, or in English “arsenal.” During the Middle Ages, the most common definition of “arsenal” was “establishment for the construction and equipment of warships.”
The traveler, armed with detailed local maps, can see “Darsena” or its Italianized variant used in a variety of Italian ports. In Venice, the name “Arsenale” is used to denote the historic city’s famed shipbuilding district. But “Darsena” prevails in several Italian port cities to denote their earliest dock areas, not arsenals. For example, in Siracusa, Sicily, Darsena marks the area along the ancient island of Ortigia, where ships and boats are still tied up. On its flank is Ristorante Darsena, one of Siracusa’s finest seafood restaurants. Similarly named areas can likely be found in Palermo and Messina ports.
During the Middle Ages, the enlightened Medici rule turned Livorno into an open city—a refuge for merchants and sailors of all nationalities and religions. The Medici drew up what was called the Livornine, an agreement outlining rules to be observed between them and non-Catholic subjects living within the city.
This document lasted for two centuries. Historian David Abulafia writes that it constituted a welcome to “merchants of all nations, Levantine and Poentine, Spanish and Portuguese, Greeks, Germans and Italians, Jews, Turks and Moors, Armenians, Persians and others.” Also included in this melting pot were English Catholics who were exiled during Protestant rule in England. The name “Levantine” referred to eastern Jews; “Poentine” referred to western Jews, particularly those from the Iberian Peninsula who had converted to Christianity. The Medici rules required that these Poentine merchants, despite being Christian, had to declare themselves as Jews.
In Livorno, no Jewish quarter was established, although many of the Jews lived near the synagogue. The city had a variety of churches for the various religions, Christian an
d non-Christian, represented there. There were also three mosques and a Muslim cemetery.
Livorno certainly was an “open city.” Trade was vibrant through the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because Muslim merchants were welcome, trade flourished with North Africa, particularly Morocco and Tunisia. The Dutch also were involved in trade activity with Livorno, despite being Protestant. The Medici decreed that Dutch merchants could live peaceably “with a certain amount of discretion.”
This trade at Livorno was vital to the growth of Tuscany: North African wheat, wax, leather, wool, and sugar. Spain and Portugal provided tin, pine nuts, tuna fish, and anchovies. Beyond the Mediterranean side of these countries, Atlantic and North Sea ports, such as Cadiz and Lisbon, also had strong relations with Livornesi merchants.
One of the later Medici rulers, Ferdinand II, sought to create an international treaty that would turn Livorno into a neutral port. This finally happened in 1691, twenty-one years after Ferdinand’s death. Napoleon Bonaparte would violate that treaty a century later.
* * *
Livorno’s center is comfortable to visit on foot, but a tour by boat is well worth the time. It begins opposite the Fortezza Nuova and, almost immediately, the boat plunges into the semidarkness of a nearly 722-foot-long covered waterway that flows beneath one of Italy’s largest squares, Livorno’s Piazza della Repubblica.
The boat, emerging into bright sunlight from under the piazza, turns right on a narrow waterway and immediately a massive nineteenth-century building with high arched windows along the top edge appears. This structure is the Mercato Coperto, or Covered Market. I walked over to it after the canal tour ended.
Mercato Coperto is a daily market with hundreds of stalls showing off clothing; meats, kosher and otherwise; vegetables and towers of fresh fruit; a variety of fish caught early that morning; the largest selection of cheeses I have ever seen in one place anywhere in Italy; and numerous gelato, pastry, and bread stands. The aromas emanating from spice stands mix into this harmony of smells, and the sellers’ barks and calls raise the din to a pleasant cacophony.
Leaving was hard; the things I wanted to buy would never fit into my bag. I’ve walked through a lot of markets—some rough and unkempt, others sparkling and magical—and I liked them all. This one, with sunlight filtering through a vast array of windows, including a long, narrow skylight in the ceiling high above, had my full attention for at least two hours.
I finished my day with a walk across the Piazza della Repubblica that earlier I had floated beneath during the boat ride. It is a vast open space, oval in shape, similar in magnitude to the fan-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena. Many of the original streets of Livorno’s historic center lead to the Piazza della Repubblica. The waterway below, known as the Royal Canal, came first, and then in the mid-1800s the square was built over it and dedicated to Grand Dukes of Tuscany. At the ends of the piazza are giant statues dedicated to Ferdinand III and Leopold II, two of the many Medici rulers. Medici rule ended in 1737, giving way to the Austrians and then the French under Napoleon.
In the mid-1800s, the area was renamed Republic Square, but locals refer to it as the Voltone because of the vault below that holds the nearly 722-foot-long Royal Canal.
* * *
As the day flickered into late afternoon, then early evening, I wandered the length of Via Grande back toward the port. This major boulevard is lined with shops under a series of Parisian-style arcades. My hotel was midway on this street. Around the corner is the Ristorante Gennaro, where the hotel desk clerk had made a 9 P.M. reservation for me, so I still had plenty of time to explore. As I wandered around the port area, I came across a series of churches with plaques indicating that they had been badly damaged by Allied bombing during World War II. One church is the Chiesa della Virgine e di San Giuseppe. The Medici built the church for Livorno’s poor residents around the turn of the eighteenth century. Despite the war being over for nearly seventy years, the church is still surrounded in construction fencing. Across the church’s parking lot to the south is still another church, the Chiesa de San Fernando. Allied bombing damaged it as well. But the plaque on the front boasts that it has been “amply restored.” It, too, was closed.
I walked from the port toward the New Fort and, in the Square of the Dominicans a short distance away I found the octagonal Chiesa di Santa Caterina, a church with the Renaissance painting Coronation of the Virgin by Giorgio Vasari, the same fellow who designed the Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri in Pisa. Next to the church is Forte San Pietro, a former prison and now a wine bar. It has a small side door that’s directly across the narrow street from a similar small door in the side of the church, the entrance and exit for prisoners being led to and from Mass.
A short branch of the canal runs here, sort of a builders’ afterthought that plunges between medieval houses that likely once were homes to fishermen. Along the canal I came across a cluster of elderly men, likely retired fishermen, drinking from small glasses of wine and beer, at a circolo, or private bar. I had a membership card from the artisans’ circolo in Pietrasanta and showed it to the man behind the bar, who greeted me warmly, took my order for a double espresso, and pointed to a table along the canal.
I sat down next to the water lined with small boats, some rigged for pleasure and others rigged with nets and other gear. I watched the sun disappear behind the church’s domed roof, listened to the low conversations of the pensioners and younger, active fishermen around me, observed a couple of card games, watched the occasional boat or skiff drift by, motors set on low purr, and felt at peace after a long day.
* * *
It was late August. My time in Tuscany was running out, and I had to choose between visiting Giglio or Elba. Giglio won because it was small enough to be seen in a day whereas Elba would require a longer journey and a car rented on the island.
Giglio is the island where, in January 2012, the cruise ship Costa Concordia slammed into a rock formation just a few dozen feet off the island’s coast at the edge of its port. The rocks sliced the hull lengthwise, the ship tilted on his side, and water gushed in. Of the 3,200 passengers and 1,023 crew, 32 died. Islanders collected survivors, invited them into their homes, and fed and clothed them until they could be transported to the mainland.
On my trip eight months later, I saw Concordia’s rust-stained, battered hulk—so big that it can be seen in satellite photographs. To get to Giglio, I took a ferry from Porto Santo Stefano—a port on the onetime island of Monte Argentario now connected by three narrow strips to the southern Tuscan mainland at Orbetello. It is a short ride, perhaps an hour, and as the ferry approached Giglio, the rust-streaked, elongated white form of the tipped ship slowly came into view, surrounded by cranes and nearly a dozen service craft. In late 2012, Italy’s environment minister, Andrea Orlando, told news reporters that the ship likely would be gone by the end of 2013. In reality, it took until mid-September 2013 to bring the 951-foot vessel upright. The salvage effort to get the ship off the rocks, towed to a shipyard somewhere along the coast of Italy, and cut into pieces was estimated to cost at least $795 million, up from the original estimate of $300 million. And authorities believe that the price tag could rise even further. The towing wasn’t expected to begin until spring 2014.
Some say this is the biggest maritime salvage job ever undertaken. I am skeptical, given the volume of salvage operations involving giant warships following various twentieth-century wars. But reports indicate that more than one hundred divers have been working in shifts around the clock. Their plan to raise the ship, which went off like clockwork in September 2013, a year after I was there: pour eighteen thousand tons of concrete to stabilize the vessel and then attach pontoons to both sides of the hull. Pressurized, these pontoons allowed crews to roll Concordia onto a massive underwater platform.
Concordia is reportedly resting on top of two archaeological sites dating from 200 BC. Archaeologists said a third site, an Etruscan shipwreck going back to 600 BC, has been
destroyed by the ship’s impact. The vessel also rests alongside a protected coral reef and marine park. This area is one of several around the island that has long attracted amateur snorkelers and divers who want to see the ancient underwater ruins and the area’s numerous varieties of exotic fish, dolphins, and huge mussels. Fortunately, today they have the rest of Giglio’s seventeen-mile coastline, and the coastlines of other islands in this archipelago, to explore.
On the August day of my visit I was overwhelmed by the immensity of the crowds of sun-soaked tourists. Most are day-trippers, eager to see the wreck, spend a few hours on the beach, and then return to mainland Italy in the afternoon. The ship’s presence has significantly reduced the number of overnight visitors. But with five hundred workers and divers struggling to refloat Concordia, hotels are full. When the ship is finally gone, sometime in 2014, tourism officials on the island hope to recover what has been lost for two years: the presence of multi-day tourists who will explore the island and the waters along its shoreline.
We clambered off the ferry and into a tiny village that was already elbow-to-elbow with day-trippers who had arrived on earlier ferries from Porto Santo Stefano. The crowds were so thick it was difficult to walk along the thin spit of land between the edge of the bay and the row of restaurants, T-shirt shops, and a few hotels. The village is not deep; only a few elongated rows of houses and narrow streets rim the bay, offering refuge just a few blocks higher up to its slightly more than one thousand year-round residents.
The most striking image of that August day was the small beach jammed with umbrellas and prone bodies on large, colorful towels, people splashing in the warm blue of the narrow bay, juxtaposed with Concordia’s towering hulk just a hundred or so feet away. What could that captain have been thinking as he guided his ship so close to this island’s outcropping of razorlike rocks so he could “salute” the locals? This happened in January when only island residents and perhaps just a few tourists were there to witness the incident. And dinner was being served aboard the ship when it went aground. Given the time of year, the early evening likely was growing dark. Anyone watching the ship doing its “sail-by” would have seen its lights suddenly go out and would have heard the sound of its hull as it scraped along an outcrop of submerged rock, being peeled open like a can of sardines.
