The first center of huts stood on an eminence lapped by the sea. It had no defensive structures and was inhabited by fishermen and salt pickers. The first written hint about this ‘Territory of Spezia’ dates back to 1224. In 1262, Niccolò Fieschi, a Genoese Guelph, ended his flight in Spezia, and began the building of the Castle of San Giorgio, which was to be soon destroyed by the opposing Ghibelline party. This is the period of the expansion of the Republic of Genoa over the whole of Liguria. Until the middle of the 14th century, the Territory of Spezia was subject to the Office of the Podestà (a sort of mayor) of Carpena, an old village on the hills behind the Gulf. The first town walls and the Castle of San Giorgio were built on the old remains at the end of the 14th century. At that time, it had already been chosen as an Office of the Podestà by the Doge of Genoa, Simon Boccanegra. At the end of the 15th century, the new Office of the Podestà increased in size and included the seaside Lunigiana and the Val di Vara, because of the destruction of the Castle and the village of Carpena by the inhabitants of La Spezia, helped by the Genoese. From now on, the town faced a long period of political and military disorder, due to the Spanish and French armies’ occupation and to the pirates’ frequent raids. There followed an economical and demographic crisis which slowed down for a long time the development of the area. Only at the end of the Napoleonic Age (1814) La Spezia, which had passed with all the Ligurian Republic under the authority of the Kingdom of Sardinia, began to develop: there were the first important road connections and between 1862 and 1869, thanks to Cavour, the building of the Military Arsenal, designed by Domenico Chiodo but already devised by Napoleon because of the particular shape of the Gulf and its strategic position. This marked the fate of the town, who faced a quick demographic development because of the immigration of workers and soldiers from various Italian regions: in less than twenty years, the inhabitants grew from 11,500 to 31,000. Between the end of the 19th century and the First World War, large factories settled in La Spezia; these would be part, like the Arsenal, of the recent history of the town. Since then a lively economic, political and social life has developed. Because of its geographical position and military settlements, La Spezia suffered heavy damages during the Second World War (traces of bombing can still be seen in the historical center) and was affected by the Resistance Movement: in all the territory there is evidence of massacres and heroic deeds.

Things to see

The Castle of San Giorgio (between Via XXVII Marzo and Via dei Colli): built on a remote tower, it was then destroyed and rebuilt in the same period of the walls of the village of Spedia (end of the 14th century). In 1605 it was fortified in order to stand up firearms. It consists of an older square lower part and of a rectangular upper part, with four angular bastions; it is now being restored. The Castle of Coderone stands on a hill near Biassa. It was built in 1273 by Abedonio Federico and Canuto de Saluto in honor of the Genoese. Baldassarre Biassa changed it into a lordly palace in the 16th century. Then it became a cemetery, now completely ruined. The ‘MAL’,Amedeo Lia Museum, the Town Museum, the Naval Museum are worth mentioning as well as the sea front and the public gardens, designed by the painter F. Del Santo (19th century), with the lovely exotic flower-beds and the monument to G. Garibaldi by Garella; the oldest part of the town, around Via del Prione and Piazza Sant’Agostino; the Church of St. Maria Assunta (Piazza Beverini), with the polychrome ‘terracotta’ attributed to Andrea Della Robbia, the painting ‘The multiplication of the loaves’ by G. B. Casoni, the 14th-century wooden crucifix, the statues by Maragliano (18th century) and works by Fiasella, Lomi and Del Santo; the Church of Nostra Signora della Neve, with San Giovanni Bosco’s  statue by Angiolo Del Santo and the old painting of the Madonna from an old oratory destroyed during the building of the Arsenal; the Church of Nostra Signora della Salute (Piazza Brin), with paintings by Giovanni A. Ferrari and Correggio, designed by the architect Dufour in 1887; the Pieve (parish church) of Marinasco, built in the 10th century and altered in the 13th, then restored in 1780; the Pieve of St. Venerio (in Via della Pieve in Migliarina), rebuilt in 1085 on a palaeochristian cemetery. You can enjoy breathtaking views from the Colli (the hills nearby), from the coast road and from Isola; the old villages of Biassa and Campiglia are quite interesting.