Soggiorna
Almost every Ligurian city is a medieval village the sea gave a living to. La Spezia is the opposite: it is a city that was decided on.
In 1860 Camillo Cavour and the military engineer Domenico Chiodo climbed the Cappuccini hill, looked at the gulf and settled that the Navy's arsenal would go there. Work began in 1861 to Chiodo's design, and the arsenal was inaugurated in 1869.
Then look at what happened to the population:
| year | inhabitants |
|---|---|
| 1861 | 15,300 |
| 1881 | 31,500 |
| 1901 | 60,000 |
| 1940 | 123,000 |
Eight times over in eighty years. No other Ligurian city did anything like it, and it did not happen because of tourism: it happened because the state put its main naval base here and the workers came. The Umbertino quarter, with its straight streets and identical blocks, was built to house them.
Keep that in mind and the whole of La Spezia reads: the width of the avenues, the regular grid of the centre, the fact that the port is not a picturesque detail but the reason everything else exists.
The gulf's name is younger than the city
"Gulf of Poets" sounds ancient. It is not.
Sem Benelli coined it on 30 August 1910, at San Terenzo. Not in a poem: in a funeral oration, the one for the scientist Paolo Mantegazza, where he said "Blessed are you, O Poet of science, who rest in peace in the Gulf of Poets." Benelli was a playwright, and in those months he was writing La cena delle beffe in a villa by the sea.
Byron and Shelley had passed through eighty years earlier — Shelley drowned in this sea in 1822 — but the name that celebrates them was coined by a third man, in a cemetery, for somebody else's death. It is a detail that changes how you read the tourist plaques.
What there is to see, in order of distance
Via del Prione is the spine: the pedestrian street that crosses the old centre, with the museums and squares opening off it. You walk it, and you need nothing else to get your bearings.
At number 234 of Via del Prione is the Amedeo Lia Museum, opened in 1996 to hold the collection Amedeo Lia gave to the city. It sits inside the convent of the Minims of St Francis of Paola, built from 1616: a seventeenth-century building full of a twentieth-century private collection.
Above everything, on the Poggio hill, stands Castello San Giorgio, a fortification of medieval origin from the thirteenth century — older, that is, than the entire modern city below it. Today it houses the Archaeological Museum.
And there is the Naval Technical Museum, beside the arsenal, which is where the history told above can be seen instead of read.
The gateway to the Cinque Terre, and what that really means
La Spezia is the station you take the Cinque Terre trains from, and it is why most people who come here come here.
The uncomfortable thing is worth saying: a great many use it only as a car park. They get off, change trains, and come back in the evening to sleep. It is a legitimate choice, but it misses a city with two real museums, a thirteenth-century castle and an industrial history unlike any other on the coast.
The practical advice: if you have two days, give half of one to the city before rushing to the villages. How to get here and where to leave the car is in getting to La Spezia.
What NOT to expect
It is not a picturesque village. Anyone arriving with Vernazza or Portovenere in mind finds a city of ninety thousand people with a commercial and military port. That is not a fault, it is a different thing.
It is not a seaside resort. The gulf's beaches are in the other towns — Lerici, Portovenere, San Terenzo — reached by boat or bus. In the city the sea is something you look at, not something you swim in.
The centre is nineteenth-century, not medieval. Regular, wide, laid out on a grid: built quickly for people arriving to work.
The two stations, and why it matters
La Spezia has two stops and they are not equivalent: La Spezia Centrale is the main one and the hub for regional trains to the Cinque Terre; La Spezia Migliarina is a secondary stop served only by some trains. Check which one is on your ticket before you board. By car, two motorways meet here: the A12 along the coast and the A15 coming down from Parma, which is the one most people arrive on from northern Italy. For the villages the train is still the better choice: it removes the parking problem in one go.
Frequently asked questions
Why did La Spezia grow so fast?
Because of the military arsenal. In 1860 Cavour and Domenico Chiodo chose this gulf as the site of Italy's main naval base; work began in 1861 and the arsenal was inaugurated in 1869. The population went from 15,300 in 1861 to 123,000 in 1940.
Why is it called the Gulf of Poets?
The name was coined on 30 August 1910 by the playwright Sem Benelli, at San Terenzo, during the funeral oration for the scientist Paolo Mantegazza. It is not an old name: Byron and Shelley had passed through eighty years earlier, but never used it.
What is there to visit in La Spezia?
Via del Prione, the pedestrian street of the centre; the Amedeo Lia Museum, opened in 1996 in a convent of 1616; Castello San Giorgio of the thirteenth century on the Poggio hill, which houses the Archaeological Museum; and the Naval Technical Museum beside the arsenal.
Does La Spezia have beaches?
Not in the city. The gulf's beaches are in the other towns — Lerici, San Terenzo, Portovenere — and are reached by boat or bus.
Is it worth stopping in La Spezia, or is it only for the Cinque Terre?
Most visitors use it as a base for the Cinque Terre trains. If you have two days, half a day in the city pays: two real museums, a thirteenth-century castle and an industrial history unlike any other on this coast.