The Chamber of Commerce’s historical archive, in its Livorno offices in Piazza del Municipio 48, houses the document traces of the businesses run by the Modigliani and Garsin families.
The visit to discover these complex, fascinating events is also an opportunity to get to know this incredible archive of about 16 thousand archive units, including the dossiers on company brands, the memorandums from the “Ancient Livorno firms” and documents about port traffic.
The Modigliani and Garsin families operated in Livorno in 1800: the Modigliani family moved here from Rome halfway through the century, while the Garsin family, while split between Marseilles and Livorno, have been a historical Livorno family from the 1700s.
The Chamber of Commerce was established in 1801, with a first representative council for the firms of the time: only four members were “Tuscan”: the others were French, English, Greek, Jewish, Swiss...
The Garsin family, more economically successful, operated in merchant trade between Livorno, Marseilles and London, and are often mentioned in Chamber documents. The Modigliani family appears with a mention of Amedeo’s paternal grandfather’s business, that of the three brothers Flaminio (the painter's father), Alberto and Isaaco. The papers contain the account of the collapse that affected the Modigliani family so much, and then also the subsequent rebirth, mainly thanks to the family's female members, and the discovery of Amedeo’s extraordinary mother, Eugenie, who was involved in the trade of “peel”, or bark, and charcoal.
The Chamber library also houses a book dedicated to another important figure in the Modigliani family: the elder brother Giuseppe Emanuele. It is his biography written by Giuseppe Funaro, published in 1952, a few days after the inauguration of the monument built in the parliamentary representative’s name and placed in Villa Fabbricotti in Livorno.
The Library (26 thousand modern monographs, 2200 ancient texts and 30 thousand journals) is open to the public and can be visited at the same time as the historical archive.