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Livorno
is the true representation of what the sea is or could be: a gateway
to the world, an immense meeting point, and place of exchange and
freedom. Together with Trieste, it is in fact Italy's most cosmopolitan
city, and you need to learn a bit of its history to understand the
roots of the honest and open spirit distinctive of the people of Livorno.
Livorno was founded in the sixteenth century by the Medici who, an
addition to its roads, buildings and port also gave it a liberal constitution
- the Livorno Constitution - that allowed each merchant to set up
a business in the city and freely practice his own religion. Thus,
the Jews arrived - and were never relegated to a ghetto - and flocks
of Greeks, Armenians, British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese
and Russians settled in the city. The outcome of this choice was that
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the free port of Livorno
had become one of the Mediterranean's most important emporia. Likewise,
its city layout, based on the model of the ideal Renaissance city
with broad avenues and canals (the fossi), was also a new concept.
Unfortunately, the bombings during World War II destroyed much of
the sixteenth-century layout and the extensions built in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, but you can still get a glimpse of the old
Livorno as you stroll through the streets and along the channels of
the Venezia district - perhaps in August with the streets are filled
with people and there's a festive atmosphere - or around the canals
in the centre and near the two fortresses (the New Fortress and the
Old Fortress) surrounded by water, or perhaps as you stand in front
of a synagogue or one of the churches of many different faiths. A
must here when it comes to cuisine is caciucco, a recipe created by
the local fishermen to avoid wasting fish that was hard to sell or
had little value. Over the years, other more costly ingredients were
added, but the original ones were scorpion fish, gurnard, small hound
(noccioli), moray eels, conger eels, squill fish, weevers, cuttlefish
or octopus, hot pepper, tomato and toasted bread.
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