Some more of Clet Abraham's imaginative stickers: a bicycle lane sign with a lipsticked mouth.
A guy with a handsaw at work on the bar of a no entry sign.
“Caffè Made in Italy” in “Via Gramsci” is not a cafe, but a wholesale distributor of coffee and coffee-related products. The logo on the sign is the stylized emblem of the Italian Republic.
“Caffè Redi” is, well, in “Via Redi”
Not exactly the “Casa Rosada”, but a normal pink house in “Via delle Grazie”.
Let's see some more of Clet Abraham's work: an angel ...
... and a demon in “Piazza della Repubblica”.
From the last food fair in “Piazza XX Settembre”: donkey and wild boar “coppiette”, which are strips of aromatized meat that has been doubled on ropes for drying.
There is a guy who finds our traffic signs too dull and has devised a way to lighten them up with a few well placed and undamaging stickers.
The mind behind this is the French artist Clet Abraham, actually a Breton from Quimper, who lives and works in Florence.
He has already “treated” signs in several cities across Europe and last week he happened to be in our town, leaving us with a few of his funny works.
Tina Di Lorenzo was born in Turin in 1872. Her father was a marquis and her mother an actress, but with a noble background herself. Tina's love for the stage begun at thirteen and she soon became one of the most famous theater actresses of the time. She was often on tour abroad and was well known even in Argentina, where she was called the Encantadora.
The new building where once was the “Metropolitan” movie theater, in “Via Marradi”. We have already seen the space on the right as an example of a modern alley.
Bicycles locked in an almost perfect symmetry in “Via Ricasoli”.
Life has not been good to this Ape car in the last three years...
This is how I caught the same vehicle, in a far better shape and line of work, in May 2009.
It looks like a three-story house (on wheels) but it is the superstructure of a large yacht in construction at the Benetti shipyard. I am sure that, when finished, it will provide quite comfortable living quarters for the lucky owners of this boat.
The back of the Hotel Gran Duca on “Via Generale Enrico Tellini”. The street what was once called “Via Greca” (Greek Street), at least since 1784, because of the many shops owned by Greeks.
In 1923 the Italian general Enrico Tellini, on a mission from the League of Nations to oversee a boundary dispute between Greece and Albania, was murdered with his staff near the border, presumably by Greek nationalists. This event escalated quickly in a diplomatic crisis leading to the Corfu incident ... and to the street name change.
The Royal Yacht “Jela” moored inside the “Porto Mediceo” in Livorno. The 47-meter boat was built in 1891 in Port Glasgow, at the D.J. Dunlop shipyard, with the name of “Mira”. In 1896 the yacht was used for the honeymoon of Prince Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy and Elena of Montenegro (Jelena Petrović-Njegoš). “Jela” was the short for Jelena.
The curious sign of “Il Pentagramma” (The Staff), an “osteria” (inn) in “Via Garibaldi”.
We have already seen the simple sign of a restaurant in “Via dell'Angiolo”. The sign has been changed recently and now says: “Liquidi e solidi” (Liquids and Solids).
Just opposite, on the same street, we have another restaurant: “La fattoria di Nonna Papera” (Grandma Duck's farm).
Visitors on the walls of the “Fortezza Vecchia” (Old Fortress). On the left the “Mastio di Matilde” (Matilda's Keep) with the Florentine fleur-de-lis.
Works for the demolition of another former movie theater have recently bugun. The “Moderno” will soon have a new life as a parking, which is not much, but always better than what it was recently left of it.
The “Moby Aki” is another sister ship of “Moby Wonder” and “Moby Freedom”, but with a different birthplace: the ferry was built in 2005 at the Fincantieri shipyard in Ancona.
Tweety, Sylvester, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Taz and Wile E. Coyote are lined up as usual on the sides of the Moby Lines ferries. There is one more sister ship, but in quite different waters: the “MS Superstar” sails the Baltic for the Estonian Tallink.
After the thorough cleaning of the facade, an “Annunciation” bas-relief is now visible above the entrance of the Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata in “Via della Madonna”.
The tourist information booth that once stood in “Piazza del Municipio” has flown away. It was probably tired of watching tourists from the cruise ships taking buses to Florence or, even worse, to Pisa.
Being not so airworthy, it crash-landed a few blocks away, in “Piazza dell'Unità d'Italia”, where it quickly found a much more fulfilling job as a parking booth.
The recently restored “cantine” under the “Scali Novi Lena”. This street runs on the eastern side of the “Darsena Nuova” (New Harbor), where the ships built at the Orlando Shipyard were once launched. A short canal passing under the swing bridge links this stretch of water with the “Porto Mediceo”. here is, during the rowing season, the finishing line of the Coppa Risi'atori.
If you look at this old postcard from the early 1900s, the only substantial difference is the building of the Nautical Technical Institute Alfredo Cappellini, now standing just in the middle of the first picture.
A tricycle in “Via Ricasoli”.
The sweet side of our latest food fair: a very promising “cassata siciliana”.
At the same stand we find candy apples and a variety of Sicilian cannoli.
Search and Rescue patrol boat CP 866 speeding back into the “Porto Mediceo” and, in background, the tug “Francesca Neri”.
“Formaggio ubriaco” (drunken cheese) is a typical dairy product of the Veneto countryside. Local farmers used to wash their rounds of cheese with pomace, giving to their product a unique flavour.
“Ricotta salata al pistacchio” or salted ricotta cheese with pistachios. These and many other treats for sale at a food fair in “Piazza XX Settembre”.
A view of the “Fosso Reale” from the “Scali Saffi” toward “Piazza Cavour”. In the middle of the image the “Ponte del Mercato” (Market Bridge), rebuilt in the 1950s.
“Livorno in avvenire” (Livorno in the future) as they imagined it in a 1906 postcard.
A rose outside a bar in “Via dell'Ardenza”. The relatively modern “La Rosa” (The Rose) quartier takes its name from a farm, owned by the heirs of a Francesco La Rosa, which once existed on the road to Montenero, between the outskirts of Livorno and the borough of Ardenza.
“La Rosa” means also “the pink one” in Italian and pink is the dominant color of most of the buildings around there. In an extreme flight of imagination the parish church was dedicated to Santa Rosa (Saint Rose).
