Livorno: trasformazione del fosso militare in via d’acqua commerciale

Livorno's system of ditches, together with a portion of the Canale dei Navicelli, starts from the Fortezza Vecchia and includes the district of Venezia and Fortezza Nuova. This system follows the layout of the walls and bastions of the ancient defensive and customs complex of the city in the modern age. Livorno is a city on the water constantly evolving: from a Pisan walled city in the second half of the 14th century, to the “pupilla dell’occhio del dominio” [apple of the eye of the Florentine dominion] in the 16th century, with Buontalenti's pentagonal bastion surrounded by a wide moat connected to the sea and to the later moat dug around the Fortezza Nuova. Between the 17th and 18th century, with the dismantling and demolition of the Fortezza Nuova, of which only a single bastion remains today, the ‘Venezia Nuova’ quarter was born, consisting almost entirely of palaces and warehouses that faced directly onto the moat connected to the port. The Venezia Nuova was built on land reclaimed from the sea and on a demilitarised area of the Fortezza Nuova. Each intervention profoundly affected the integrated land-water system, bringing about a series of substantial changes, such as the transformation of the external defensive structures, including the dismantling of the counterscarp wall, the embankments and the rectification of the elbows of the ditch. Starting from previous literature and the analysis of documentary sources, the present contribution aims to investigate, in an interdisciplinary view, the stretch of ditch between the Fortezza Vecchia and the Fortezza Nuova starting from the various types of interventions and construction techniques used, within the framework of the main urban and architectural transformations of the Venezia Nuova district.