Palazzo Santoponte

In “Piazza Cavour”, opposite the “Palazzo Rosso”, we have the “Palazzo Santoponte”, built in the 1830's by the architect Giovan Battista Picchianti.On the first floor of this building was once active a workshop for the processing of coral, a very important source of wealth for the merchants of Livorno at the time. The coral was manufactured into beads and then sent to London on ships that had exported pepper to Italy.After the early sixteenth century diamonds were the main item in jewellery imports from India, and coral took first place in exports to the east, for a long time being an essential commodity in all trade with India.The western Mediterranean was the only source of red coral, the kind needed for the Indian market, Marseilles, Leghorn, Genoa, and Naples were centres for coral fishing and coral industries… In India it was used for jewellery and in cremation ceremonies, and served also as a symbol of social standing.Leghorn's importance as a centre of the coral trade and industry was described by a Jewish coral merchant from that place named Abraham de Castro: it is common for the coral fisheries to bring from the islands adjacent to Leghorn from six to eight thousand pounds weight of coral each boat…
About three hundred of such boats are employed in collecting in each of the coral fishing seasons for the market of Leghorn, besides which great quantities of coral are from time to time imported at Leghorn from France.

“Diamonds and coral” by Gedalia Yogev
(Leicester University Press, 1978)

See also: Diamond and coral (DeCastro Family Story)

Versione italiana