In the heart of the city of Livorno stands the new Synagogue. New because the old one, built starting from 1593, and continuously embellished in the following centuries, was destroyed in the bombings of 1944. It was one of the largest and richest synagogues in Europe, second only to that of Amsterdam and built not in one peripheral or marginal area, but in the center of the city, for everyone to see, in a square named after one of the most important rabbis and intellectuals of all time, Elia Benamozegh, to testify the importance that the Jewish community had in economic and social life of the city.
Since the founding of the city, Jews (mainly Sephardi, of Portuguese / Spanish origin), constituted an important component of city life. In the "Livornine Constitutions" of 1591 and 1593, the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de 'Medici included important concessions in favor of the Marranos (the Spanish-Portuguese Jews who had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century); the Grand Duke's aim was to use their commercial skills and experience in order to promote the development of the young city. Also for this reason Livorno was the only Italian city where the Jews were not confined to a ghetto, but lived free and respected on a par with all the other inhabitants.
This great tolerance, both religious and legal, and considerable economic prosperity attracted new members from all over Italy, so much so that in the eighteenth century the Jewish community represented 10% of the entire Labronic population.
After the passage of the Second World War and the deportations, the number of the Jews of Livorno was reduced to less than a thousand. To commemorate their deportation and death in the concentration camps, many brass plates with their names (the "Stolpersteine") were placed where each of them lived or where he was arrested.