Villa Jana, Quercianella

A recent view of Villa Jana in Quercianella, Livorno

A panoramic view of the area from a 1923 postcard

(Postcard digitized from the collection of Antonio Cantelli)

Search labels: postcard
See also: Villa Jana - Trillian's Walk - Green Lizard's Bay - Baia del Rogiolo - Quercianella

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Dark Pink

A fresh hand of paint for the ramp of the “Marmorica” ferry.

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Retro or Not

There was an interesting assortment of unusual bicycles at the TAG Heuer VelaFestival. Some of the bikes were for sale at the stands, a few were clearly used by boats crew members.

Magic Retrò bike

STRiDA folding bicycle

STHÜB telescopic bike

See also: TAG Heuer VelaFestival
Search labels: bicycle art
External links: Bicycle Art

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The Window of Santa Caterina

The front window, above the entrance, of the church of Santa Caterina.

See also: Santa Caterina - Inside Santa Caterina

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Dagadà Spirito di Maremma

Maremma is a large area of south-western Tuscany whose ‘spirit’ the “Dagadà Spirito di Maremma” honors with her name. 42-year-old Simone Gesi crossed the Atlantic with this 6.50 meter sailboat, taking part in the 2011 Mini Transat 6.50, a solo transatlantic yacht race that started in La Rochelle (France), to end in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), after 4000 miles, with only a stop in Funchal.

See also: TAG Heuer VelaFestival - Wianno Senior
External links: Simone Gesi e Dagadà Spirito di Maremma (Official site, in Italian)
Search labels: sailboat

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Strange Dolls

I saw this weird bunch of dolls (or decorative objects?) staring at me from a shop window in Via Piave.

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After Godzilla

The more recent sign of a political center in Via dei Mulini, which now goes as “1921” or “El Chico Malo” (The Bad Boy). The reference is to the year when the Italian Communist Party was founded here in Livorno.

In December 2010 it was still a social center and it was named after the main character of so many monster movies: Godzilla.

External links: Centro Politico 1921 (in Italian) - El Chico Malo (in Italian)

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Wianno Senior

The Wianno Senior is a 25-foot (7.62 m) gaff rigged sloop originally designed about a century ago by Horace Manley Crosby for a group of sailors from the Wianno Yacht Club, who were looking for a type of sailboat to race in the difficult waters of the Nantucket Sound.

A couple of hundreds of these boats have been built, the more recent in fiberglass. The one you can see sailing inside the port of Livorno, is built under licence by the Wianno Senior Italia.

One of the most famous owner of a Wianno Senior was John Fitzgerald Kennedy: he received his “Victura” (Latin for ‘she who will win’) as a gift from his father for his fifteenth birthday. Here are the young Ted and John on board, in the summer of 1946.

On the same boat: Senator Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier on the cover of Life magazine, July 1953.

External links: Wianno Senior (Wikipedia) - John F. Kennedy's True Love (YachtPals)
See also: TAG Heuer VelaFestival
Search labels: sailboat

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My Ideal Boat

Wandering about the TAG Heuer VelaFestival I have found the perfect boat for my sailing skills: she would fit perfectly on my terrace and I would still be able to reach my couch and the fridge with a few steps. All joking aside, I think this is a kind of sailing simulator for kids or people like me...

See also: TAG Heuer VelaFestival
Search labels: sailboat

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TAG Heuer VelaFestival

In a wonderful and sunny day the Porto Mediceo of Livorno welcomes the first “TAG Heuer VelaFestival”, an open-air boat show, but mostly about sailing. The event is organized by the magazine “Il Giornale della Vela” (Sailing Journal).

The location is suggestive: the jetties of the Yacht Club Livorno are close to the Forte di Punta (Fort of the Point), which once defended the port of Livorno with a powerful battery of coastal artillery. On the other sides of the Medicean basin we have the “Fortezza Vecchia”, cargo ships, ferries and luxury motor yachts.

Some boat slips are still empty because in the past days it wasn't smooth sailing to get here: on Monday we had winds at 110 km/h (60 knots or 68 miles per hour). The boat show will go on until next Sunday.

External links: TAG Heuer VelaFestival - Il Giornale della Vela (In Italian) - TAG Heuer (Wikipedia)

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Rivellino di San Marco

This turret is part of what once was the “Rivellino di San Marco” (Saint Mark's Ravelin), a fortification erected between the “Fortezza Nuova” (New Fortress) and the “Forte San Pietro”.

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Ril

The tug “Ril” has towed in port a barge of huge containers called sponsons, which will be used to float the “Costa Concordia” during her coming salvage, probably next summer.

External links: Risky Rescue: A Year After It Sank, Raising the Costa Concordia (The Daily Beast)
Search labels: tug

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The Sign of Leo

In the same window of the art gallery where I saw “Ottobre” (October), there was also “Leone” (Leo), a zodiac sign interpretation by Francesco Musante.

See also: Secret Dreams - October

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Trebialdule

Ask a Livornese if he knows where is (or was) a place called Trebialdule and it is almost certain that the answer would be no. The most daring would speculate about a faraway land or some mythical tales, without knowing that the answer is at one end of Via Grande, about where Piazza Guerrazzi lies today.

The toponym was first mentioned in ecclesiastical records in 891 and comes from “Trebbio di Aldule”, where trebbio is an old form of trivio, which is the meeting of three roads. The first road once lead to Salviano and then to the Via Aemilia Scauri, the second coasted the ancient “Porto Pisano”, while the third lead eastward, toward the sea and the tiny hamlet of Livorno. It seems that this is the place where the first church of Santa Giulia, the patroness of Livorno, was built. A quite large and verbose plaque in Via Santa Barbara reminds us of this story. (Map from the “Annali di Livorno” by Giuseppe Vivoli)

Fronteggiava questo palazzo - unica nella popolare via Grande
la chiesa della Misericordia - già di Santa Barbara
e prima ancora duomo designato della nuova ampia Livorno Medicea
elevato su resti presumibilmente appartenuti alla memorata
pieve matrice di Santa Giulia di Porto pisano

Antica tradizione e indagine urbanistica avvertono che qui vicino al famoso scalo della laguna pisana
era il trebbio di Aldule donde si diramavano le vie per Pisa Roma e la cala di Liburna e Livorna
quivi sarebbe sorta - forse sul posto del sovente citato tempio d'Ercole e sotto il titolo di S. Maria
la prima chiesa della nostra terra che dopo la traslazione del corpo della patrona dalla Gorgona a Brescia
- operata da re Desiderio dei Longobardi intorno all'anno 762 - troviamo nominata S. Giulia di Trebialdule
in essa Adelchi avrebbe implorato protezione da qui salpando esule per Costantinopoli
nel 1286 la pieve e il piviere di porto pisano andarono devastati dalle milizie di Carlo d'Angiò
sui citati resti il granduca Francesco dei Medici - il 18 giugno 1581 - prese a elevare una più ampia costruzione
perché servisse da duomo alla rinascimentale “città ideale” fondata il 28 marzo 1577 su piano del Buontalenti
allineante sulla chiesa quella che è tuttora la maggior via cittadina
sorto - con la piazza Grande - nel 1595 - l'attuale duomo “a fundamentis” la chiesa ricordata passò alla compagnia
che ha lasciato il nome a questa strada e - nel 1780 - come detto - all'arciconfraternita della Misericordia
finché colpita dalla guerra nel 1944 scomparve del tutto nel 1953

Ponevasi questo ricordo il 22 maggio 1962 - nello stesso giorno di accomiatava dalla diocesi
il vescovo S.E. Mons. Andrea Pancrazio - promosso arcivescovo di Gorizia - per la cui iniziativa fu eretto nella cattedrale
l'altare per accogliere le reliquie della santa patrona ritornati dopo dodici secoli

External links: A 1160 unpublished document (in Latin)

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Remembrances Park

Parco delle Rimembranze (Remembrances Park), Piazza Roma, 1931

Piazza Matteotti, Via Mameli, February 2013

(Postcard digitized from the collection of Antonio Cantelli)

Search labels: postcard

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Habemus aquam!

Finally we have running water again. Luckily there are still around several of these century-old drinking water fountains which, in the lower parts of Livorno, have never ceased to supply drinking water. Fixing them with multiple faucets is probably one of the few positive things done in these days.

See also: Without Water - Dried Up - Third Day without Water
External links: The dig - Queueing for water 2 - 3 - 4 (Il Tirreno)

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Third Day without Water

On the plinth of the monument to Ferdinando III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in Piazza della Repubblica:

A Ferdinando III auspice dell'opera onde la città ebbe ricco ristoro di acque salubri gratitudine pubblica

(To Ferdinand III inspirer of the works from which the city received plentiful relief of salubrious waters public gratitude)

Yesterday, on the other side of the same square, longer lines to get some water, with the above mentioned monument in background.

See also: Without Water - Dried Up - Habemus aquam!
External links: The dig - Queueing for water 2 - 3 - 4 (Il Tirreno)

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Dried Up

Yesterday was the second day of a Livorno without water. The underground main pipe supplying water from Filettole has been heavily damaged along the Canale dei Navicelli. Fixing the broken pipe is made harder by the nearby canal which keeps flooding the dig.

Meanwhile, a tanker in Piazza della Repubblica is supplying drinking water.

See also: Without Water - Third Day without Water - Habemus aquam! - Canale dei Navicelli
External links: The dig - Queueing for water 2 - 3 - 4 (Il Tirreno)

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Without Water

Livorno, a city of 160,000, is without running water since yesterday. A control unit at the local utility was allegedly struck by a lightning during a storm last night. They probably have never heard of the interesting contraption invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1749. Schools will be closed today and we will be on the dry side at least until the late afternoon.

See also: Dried Up - Third Day without Water - Habemus aquam!

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The Vinyl Eaters

Vinyl-eating fishes at Surfer Joe's Diner, one of the most interesting things at the Livorno Aquarium.

See also: Acquario di Livorno
External links: Surfer Joe's Diner

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Giuseppe Garibaldi

The hero of Italian Risorgimento Giuseppe Garibaldi died on 2 June 1882 on the Caprera island. For many municipal authorities, every other consideration apart, this event started a race to erect a monument to the Hero of the Two Worlds in their own quickly renamed “Piazza Garibaldi”.

Livorno fared quite well with a beautiful statue by Augusto Rivalta, which was ready in 1889: they even had time to organize a parallel unveiling with Lucca and Como.

The monument in Lucca by Urbano Lucchesi shows us a slightly less heroic Garibaldi. As we have already said, it was unveiled the same day of the one in Livorno, on 22 September 1889.

The Pisans, as always, were late: they got their monument only on 26 June 1892. However, the bronze statue by Ettore Ferrari shows us a very down-to-earth Garibaldi in shirtsleeves, without the cloak and with a hand on his flank.
If Tuscans were timely with their tributes, the Italian-American community of New York was even more so: the Garibaldi monument in Washington Square Park, a work by the sculptor Giovanni Turini, was dedicated on 4 June 1888.

See also: Garibaldi
External links: Garibaldi (Rome) - Garibaldi (Paris) - Garibaldi (New York) - Garibaldi (Venice)

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Viale Amerigo Vespucci

Coast and villas by the sea at Antignano, December 2012

Almost the same view from a 1932 postcard

(Postcard digitized from the collection of Antonio Cantelli)

Search labels: postcard
See also: Miramare - Rocky Coast at Antignano - Dancer's Rock

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Nodding Off

Wall lanterns outside a restaurant, Via dell'Origine.

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The Flowering Court

“La corte fiorita” (The Flowering Court), via Borra

“Nato in Vinarchia” (Born in Vinarchy), via Borra

“Caffè Borbone” (House of Bourbon Café), Via Sant'Omobono

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Palazzo Ciampi

On the right side of the Cisternone, facing the the square with the same name, we find Palazzo Ciampi, built between 1830 and 1840, with its characteristic and elegant semicircular facade, probably a design by the archittect Pasquale Poccianti (1774-1858), the same of the above mentioned Cisternone.

See also: Half-Dome Fad - Cisternone

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Canale della Giudecca

As our friend Jack would say, we are out of jurisdiction posting pictures of cruise ships slowly sailing along the Canale della Giudecca, after leaving the port of Venice at sunset.

But Wind Surf and Celebrity Solstice are, so to speak, old friends: we have already seen both of them in Livorno last year. (Pictures taken in Venice last September)

Search labels: cruise ship
See also: Wind Surf - Celebrity Solstice

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October

Seen in the window of an art gallery in Corso Mazzini: “Ottobre” (October) by Andrea Agostini, the same author of “Sogni segreti” (Secret Dreams).

See also: Secret Dreams

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Election 2013

As usual, in case of an election, I spent last weekend in my old school which hosted four polling stations. The last times I posted some of the children's works, but now it is more funny to show you the official poster with the 16 parties competing in Tuscany for 18 of 315 Senate seats. By the way, with a fifth of the population, Italy needs three times the senators of the United States...

The number of the lists increases to 19 on the poster for the election of 38 “deputati” (representatives) to our 630-member lower house. If you care to see even more of the 215 fancy party symbols registered with the Ministry of Interior, please check this pdf file.

See also: De Amicis School - Inside De Amicis - Friends Near and Far
External links: Italy Votes for Chaos and the Euro Crisis Is Back (Bloomberg)
- How Beppe Grillo's social media politics took Italy by storm (The Guardian)
- Italy’s Political Mess: Why the Euro Debt Crisis Never Ended (Time)
- Ungovernability wins (Economist)

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Music Pavilion

The “Padiglione della Musica” (Music Pavilion) was built in 1935 by the architect Ghino Venturi, when the “Terrazza Mascagni” was still named after the local Fascist leader, Costanzo Ciano.

Destroyed in the Second World War, the structure was rebuilt in 1998 as closely possible to the original and now it is called simply “Gazebo”.

(Postcard digitized from the collection of Antonio Cantelli)

Search labels: postcard - Terrazza Mascagni
See also: Terrazza Mascagni - Gazebos

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