Livorno, Italy

Livorno is 18km southwest of Pisa and Tuscany's third largest city. The remaining old parts of the city reveal a network of picturesque canals and hump-backed bridges with lively streetlife and top-quality seafood .

Livorno's port was developed under the Medici in 1618 when they declared it a free port and set up a liberal constitution which prompted an many different cultures such as Jews, Greeks, Spanish Muslims, English Catholics etc. Livorno flourished, and attracted a community of English expatriates (including Shelley) whose anglicization of the city's name into Leghorn is still in use.

Porto Mediceo has fishing boats spilling back into the canal quarter and sometimes a cruise liner blocking the view out to sea.

Sangallo's Fortezza Vecchia flanks the harbour, about 100m north of Livorno's sole surviving bit of Renaissance art, the statue of the Quattro Mori which overlooks the waterfront road of the Piazza Micheli.

The 1595 statue of Ferdinando is situated here I with the four chained Moors by Pietro Tacca (1623), either as a celebration of the success of Tuscan raids against North African shipping, or merely as slaves cowering beneath Medici glory.

The Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori, devoted to Fattori and the late-nineteenth-century Macchiaioli movement is Italy's version of Impressionism and is housed in the extravagant Villa Mimbelli, 1km south at San Jacopo.

From the Mercato Centrale, the della Madonna strikes north into the Venezia district and is Livorno's most attractive area with crumbling old tenement buildings and the Fortezza Nuova ringed around by a network of quiet canals.

August sees the area come alive for the Effetto Venezia which is a free street carnival of jazz and world music.

Livorno villas and holiday homes.

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