Livorno is a city which gives its name to a western province of Tuscany. Covering a total area of 104.79 km² and with 160,775 inhabitants, Livorno faces the Tyrrhenian Sea. For centuries, Livorno has served as one of the main Italian ports and remains today an important port of call for both goods and tourists.

Livorno is not crossed by any major rivers and lies on a mainly flat territory diverted only by the Livornesi Hills. The city’s coastline is mostly low and sandy and the municipality also includes some small islands in the Tuscan Archipelago.

The history of Livorno is not only a source of pride for the locals but also serves as an important pre-cursor to its current status as a tourist and trade hub. In ancient times, as early as 904, Livorno was a small primitive village known as “Livorna”. However, it quickly surpassed its humble roots and experienced remarkable development, becoming the biggest port in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Controlled by the Visconti family of Milan, Livorno became Porto Franco and during the 1500s experienced a period of intense growth and development thanks largely to policies introduced by the Medici family. Over the following centuries Livorno suffered the same fate as much of the rest of region, a loss of autonomy and incorporation, first into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and then into the new Kingdom of Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Like all of Tuscany’s principal cities, Livorno is blessed with an almost endless list of magnificent churches built in array of styles, during an array of centuries, and for an array of different faiths. Rich in historical, religious and artistic importance, these churches light up the streets of Livorno and include the city’s Cathedral, named after St. Francis and built during the sixteenth century; the Church of Santa Maria of the Rescue, built in the eighteenth century; the United Church of the Greeks, dating back to the 1600s; the Church of St. Ferdinand, built in Baroque style; the Valdese Church, which has a Neogothic style; the Temple of the Alemanna Dutch Congregation; a Protestant church built in Neogothic style in the second half of the nineteenth century; the Church of Santa Caterina, from 1720; the Church of San Giorgio, founded originally as Anglican church; and finally a beautifully traditional Jewish Synagogue, built in the eighteenth century.

The elegance of Livorno is, luckily, not confined to its churches and cathedrals, as the city can boast an equally splendid wealth of secular monuments built each for their own peculiar reasons but all feats of architectural splendor. One of these buildings is the Bottini Oil Palazzo, an old warehouse built in the early years of the 1700s and today home to the Labronico Library. Then there’s the Marble Column Centre, which takes its name from the marble used to build it; the Mausoleum of Cyan, an ancient building which greatly reflects the Fascist period in which it was built; the Grand Palace, built after the Second World War as a symbol of the city’s defiance and pride; the Palazzo of Ardenza Casini, built during the nineteenth century; the marble monument to Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor, who is surrounded by 4 bronze pirates; and finally the Palazzo de Lardarel, a symbol of the sheer beauty that is modestly hidden in the streets of Livorno.