The Port Centers, structures born in Northern Europe through which the port cities make citizens, students and visitors the activities that take place within their ports, often unknown even to those who live a few meters from the port perimeter, were introduced in Italy, in Genoa, with an initiative promoted by the provincial authority, then chaired by Alessandro Repetto, assisted in the project by Riccardo Degl'Innocenti, and supported by the then president of the Authority Docker, Giuliano Gallanti. The latter, who died at the beginning of the 2020, was convinced of the need to strengthen the cooperation between the city and its port and to promote a harmonious coexistence of port activities in the territories who host them, and had also brought the initiative to Livorno when He had assumed the presidency of the Labronic Port Authority.

If in Genoa the Port Center, inaugurated at the end of 2009 ( of 27 November 2009), had lived - initially - high and then many low, only to end up wickedly swept under the carpet of the indifference of both local administrations and both, what even more serious, of the port community, in Livorno the Port Center is alive and well. Today, in the Old Fortress, an event is held to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Livorno Port Center, during which the president of the Italian Banking Authority of the Port System of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Davide Gariglio, and the Director General of the Association Internationale Villes et Ports (AIVP), Bruno Delsalle, signed the updated Charter of Port Center which defines a framework of identified missions and on the basis of which each Port Center develops its own programme of activities according to history and socio-economic situation of each city-port.

The Livorno Port Center is a high-tech mini-museum nestled in the heart of the Old Fortress, a laboratory multimedia and technological that in these two decades has allowed students, citizens and tourists, to learn about the history, the functions of the Labronic port and its professions. Not a simple multimedia exhibition of the Livorno docks, complete with touch-screens and sliding screens, but a gym of life through which to bring citizens closer and closer to the port reality. "In recent years - he underlined Gariglio - we have managed to create a community atmosphere. A thanks to the late Giuliano Gallanti and to those who after him built and shared every step of this path".

Today at the Old Fortress were also remembered the activities put in place in recent years by the Port Authority to promote compatibility between the port and the urban fabric: the initiatives related to the Open Port project, which for seventeen years years promotes knowledge of port areas and facilities; the Thursday of the Port Center, a series of thematic events ranging from history to port culture in general; the thematic library built in 2022 in the same building where the Port Center is located; the educational-exhibition circuit which includes the exhibition of historic boats at the Warehouse ex FS groupage; the management of the Old Fortress, of which it is open to the public, promoting its function as a hinge between port and city as a fundamental asset of attraction for tourists and passengers and citizens.

"In a context in which the coexistence of functions port and urban functions often creates friction and friction - has underlined Gariglio - it becomes essential to put in place Virtuous strategies that reconcile development needs infrastructural with those of urban and environmental quality". And in this context - he specified - the Port Center is part of the of a much larger project that has as its purpose "the creation of a shared path to promote a real integration between two realities - the port and the citizens - who have different and sometimes divergent interests".

A positive experience, that of the Port Center, which the Port Authority Toscana intends to replicate by creating a real network of Territorial Port Centers: in Piombino, within the CISP-Centro Integrated Port Services, near the Station Marittima, suitable spaces have been identified for the setting up of a new Port Center, while in Portoferraio another could be born inside the Salt Warehouses, building being redeveloped which will be used as a also host the Decentralized Administrative Office of the Port Authority, Inaugurated in April 2023.

In his speech, the mayor of Livorno, Luca Salvetti, A heartfelt thanks to the Port Authority for the work carried out in recent years: "Livorno - he pointed out - is a city with a port but a city of port", underlining how the innovative idea of the Port Center has been able to insert the port into a narrative dimension that has facilitated integration into the urban fabric.