Livorno in the context of "16th century"

Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendants. The term "Sephardic" comes from Sepharad, the Hebrew word for Iberia. These communities flourished for centuries in Iberia until they were expelled in the late 15th century. Over time, "Sephardic" has also come to refer more broadly to Jews, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, who adopted Sephardic religious customs and legal traditions, often due to the influence of exiles. In some cases, Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Sephardic communities and adopted their liturgy are also included under this term. Today, Sephardic Jews form a major component of the global Jewish population, with the largest population living in Israel.

The earliest documented Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula dates to the Roman period, beginning in the first centuries CE. After facing persecution under the Pagan and later Christian Visigothic Kingdom, Jewish communities flourished for centuries under Muslim rule in Al-Andalus following the Umayyad conquest (711–720s), a period often seen as a golden age. Their status declined under the radical Almoravid and Almohad dynasties and during the Christian Reconquista. In 1391, anti-Jewish riots in Castile and Aragon led to massacres and mass forced conversions. In 1492, the Alhambra Decree by the Catholic Monarchs expelled Jews from Spain, and in 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal issued a similar edict. These events led to migrations, forced conversions, and executions. Sephardic Jews dispersed widely: many found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, settling in cities such as Istanbul, Salonica, and İzmir; others relocated to North African centers like Fez, Algiers, and Tunis; Italian ports including Venice and Livorno; and parts of the Balkans, the Levant (notably Safed), and the Netherlands (notably Amsterdam). Smaller communities also emerged in France, England, and the Americas, where Sephardim often played key roles in commerce and diplomacy.

The names used for some major European cities differ in different European and sometimes non-European languages. In some countries where there are two or more languages spoken, such as Belgium or Switzerland, dual forms may be used within the city itself, for example on signage. This is also the case in Ireland, despite a low level of actual usage of the Irish language. In other cases where a regional language is officially recognised, that form of the name may be used in the region, but not nationally. Examples include the Welsh language in Wales in the United Kingdom, and regional languages in parts of Italy and Spain.

There is a slow trend to return to the local name, which has been going on for a long time. In English Livorno is now used, the old English form of Leghorn having become antiquated at least a century ago. In some cases, such as the replacement of Danzig with Gdańsk, the official name has been changed more recently. Since 1995, the government of Ukraine has encouraged the use of Kyiv rather than Kiev.

The Italian Communist Party (Italian: Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy. It was established in Livorno as the Communist Party of Italy (Italian: Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I) on 21 January 1921, when it seceded from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), under the leadership of Amadeo Bordiga, Antonio Gramsci, and Nicola Bombacci. Outlawed during the Italian fascist regime, the party continued to operate underground and played a major role in the Italian resistance movement. The party's peaceful and national road to socialism, or the Italian road to socialism, the realisation of the communist project through democracy, repudiating the use of violence and applying the Constitution of Italy in all its parts, a strategy inaugurated under Palmiro Togliatti but that some date back to Gramsci, would become the leitmotif of the party's history.

Having changed its name in 1943, the PCI became the second largest political party of Italy after World War II, attracting the support of about a third of the vote share during the 1970s. At the time, it was the largest Communist party in the Western world, with peak support reaching 2.3 million members in 1947, and peak share being 34.4% of the vote (12.6 million votes) in the 1976 Italian general election. The PCI was part of the Constituent Assembly of Italy and the Italian government from 1944 to 1947, when the United States ordered a removal from government of the PCI and PSI. The PCI–PSI alliance lasted until 1956; the two parties continued to govern at the local and regional level until the 1990s. Apart from the 1944–1947 years and occasional external support to the organic centre-left (1960s–1970s), which included the PSI, the PCI always remained at the opposition in the Italian Parliament, with more accommodation as part of the Historic Compromise of the 1970s, which ended in 1980, until its dissolution in 1991, not without controversy and much debate among its members.

The names used for some major European cities differ in different European and sometimes non-European languages. In some countries where there are two or more languages spoken, such as Belgium or Switzerland, dual forms may be used within the city itself, for example on signage. This is also the case in Ireland, despite a low level of actual usage of the Irish language. In other cases where a regional language is officially recognised, that form of the name may be used in the region, but not nationally. Examples include the Welsh language in Wales in the United Kingdom, and parts of Italy and Spain.

There is a slow trend to return to the local name, which has been going on for a long time. In English Livorno is now used, the old English form of Leghorn having become antiquated at least a century ago. In some cases, such as the replacement of Danzig with Gdańsk, the official name has been changed more recently. Since 1995, the government of Ukraine has encouraged the use of Kyiv rather than Kiev.

"To a Skylark" is a poem completed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in late June 1820 and published accompanying his lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound by Charles and James Ollier in London.

It was inspired by an evening walk in the country near Livorno, Italy, with his wife Mary Shelley, and describes the appearance and song of a skylark they come upon. Mary Shelley described the event that inspired Shelley to write "To a Skylark": "In the Spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn (Livorno) ... It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fire-flies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark."

The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts (/ˈtʃɛntʃi/ CHEN-chee; 1820) is a verse drama in five acts by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in the summer of 1819, and inspired by a real Roman family, the House of Cenci (in particular, Beatrice Cenci). Shelley composed the play in Rome and at Villa Valsovano near Livorno, from May to 5 August 1819. The work was published by Charles and James Ollier in London in 1819. The Livorno edition was printed in Livorno, Italy by Shelley himself in a run of 250 copies. Shelley told Thomas Love Peacock that he arranged for the printing himself because in Italy "it costs, with all duties and freightage, about half of what it would cost in London." Shelley sought to have the play staged, describing it as "totally different from anything you might conjecture that I should write; of a more popular kind... written for the multitude." Shelley wrote to his publisher Charles Ollier that he was confident that the play "will succeed as a publication." A second edition appeared in 1821, his only published work to go into a second edition during his lifetime.

The play was not considered stageable in its day due to its themes of incest and parricide, and was not performed in public in England until 1922, when it was staged in London. In 1886 the Shelley Society had sponsored a private production at the Grand Theatre, Islington, before an audience that included Oscar Wilde, Robert Browning, and George Bernard Shaw. Though there has been much debate over the play's stageability, it has been produced in many countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and the United States. It was included in the Harvard Classics as one of the most important and representative works of the Western canon.