Every design for La Spezia

Via del Prione, the narrow carrugio that splits La Spezia's old town in two, takes its name from the prione, the big stone where public announcements were once read aloud. The town around it grew from a small Genoese outpost into a naval city once the great arsenal was commissioned by the Royal government, and the old medieval centre now sits beside a grid of nineteenth-century streets.

What makes it particular is the gulf. Deep and sheltered, it has given the city a major Italian Navy base, one of the busiest commercial harbours in the Mediterranean and, thanks to Shelley, Byron and Lawrence, the name of the Gulf of Poets. Everyday life follows the water: trains and boats out to the Cinque Terre, the Palio del Golfo rowing race in summer, an afternoon in the Museo Tecnico Navale or the Museo civico Amedeo Lia, and the Castello San Giorgio, now home to the city's archaeological museum.

If you learnt to row, sail or simply swim in this gulf, you already know every curve of this map.