Livorno, Italy

Livorno sits on the Tyrrhenian coast of Tuscany with roughly 160,000 residents. In 1573 the architect Bernardo Buontalenti designed it as a planned Renaissance port laid out with radial star fortifications, and the 1521 Livornine Laws granted religious freedom that drew Sephardic Jews along with Armenian, Greek, and Dutch traders. The New Venice district, built in 1705 across canals crossed by nine bridges, sits beside the 1594 Fortezza Vecchia and the 1618 Fortezza Nuova that guard the harbour. Amedeo Modigliani was born here in 1869, and his portrait style still leaves art historians divided over what shaped those elongated faces.