Southwest from Lucca, with Pisa lying between, is the great port of Leghorn, whence are shipped the marbles of Carrara, the oil of Lucca, the wines of Chianti and the Leghorn hats and braids of all Tuscany. These four things keep Livorno going.
Leghorn is as modern as Lucca is antiquated and is the most cosmopolitan of all Italian cities.
When Philip III expelled the Moors from Spain Cosmo II, Duke of Livorno, invited two thousand of them to come to his Dukedom.
Montesquieu remarked upon this conglomerate population, and approved of it apparently, as he called the founding and populating of the city the master work of the Medici dynasty.
The valley of the Arno, as the river flows through the heart of Tuscany from its source high in the hills just south of Monte Falterona, is the most romantic region in all Italy. It is the borderland between the south and the north, and, as it was a battle-ground between Guelph and Ghibellines, so too is it the common ground where the blood of the northerner and southerner mingles to-day.
As great rivers go, the Arno is neither grand nor magnificent, but, though its proportions are not great, its banks are lined with historic and artistic ruins, from the old fortress at Marina di Pisa to Poppi, the ancient capital of the Casentino, perched so quaintly upon its river-washed rock.
Pisa, Leghorn and Lucca are a triumvirate of Tuscan towns which should be viewed and considered collectively. One should not be included in an itinerary without the others, though indeed they have little in common, save the memories of the past.
Pisa is another of these dead cities of Europe, like Bruges, Leyden, and Rothenburg. Once ardent and lively in every activity of life, its population now has sunk into a state of lethargy. Industry and commerce, and the men who should busy themselves therewith, are in the background, hidden behind a barrier of bureaucracy. Pisa, a town of twenty-six thousand inhabitants, has a tribunal of nine civil judges, a criminal court presided over by sixty-three more, and a "roll" of more than half a hundred notaries. Then there is a service of Domains, of Registry and of Public Debt; besides an array of functionaries in charge of seminaries, orphan asylums, schools and colleges. All these belong to the state.