The Livorno laws, together with the establishment of the free port and the port's neutrality, brought several foreign merchants to the city: Greeks, French, Dutch-Germans, Armenians, English, Jews and others.
Each of these vital communities brought their traditions, cultures and wisdom: in short, the Medici’s ideal city born from nothing became the most cosmopolitan, lively and multi-religious port in the Mediterranean. A model of tolerance that fully returned its fruits, as in a few short years, Livorno became the powerful trading centre that the Medici wanted.
These communities were known as “Nations”. Each of them had their own Consul, a representative who allowed the city to be governed: a unique reality of its kind in Europe, based on the common interest in trade, an extraordinary opening. The “Nations” were communities of fully free merchants, who coexisted in peace, with a skilful balance. Each of them had their own places of worship, which coexisted nearby to each other in total harmony: there was never, almost unheard of in Europe, a ghetto where the Jewish community lived.