Discover La Spezia

La Spezia (Spèsa in the local dialect of Ligurian) is a city in the Liguria region of northern Italy, at the head of La Spezia Gulf, and capital city of the province of La Spezia. It is one of the major Italian military and commercial harbours, located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea. La Spezia also hosts one of the biggest military industries of Italy, OTO Melara. It has no truly remarkable historic or architectural features, apart from the modern (circa 1960) Cristo Re alla Spezia Cathedral and the Lia Art Museum. The post office preserves some Futurist mosaics by Prampolini. Although La Spezia, peculiar in Italy by being a modern city (almost all buildings date after 1920), has few attractions, its province includes beautiful places like Lerici, Portovenere and the Cinque Terre, all lying on the La Spezia Gulf, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. During the Second World War, the city's port was used by the Kriegsmarine as the main base for U-boats operating in the Mediterranean Sea.