Conservationists in Livorno have appealed to the Tuscan regional authorities to preserve the Villa Dupouy where the poet stayed for three months until his friend Shelley’s death by drowning in the nearby Gulf of La Spezia in July 1822.
A year later Byron stopped again at Livorno while sailing from Genoa to join the fight for independence in Greece, where he died in 1824. A local road, Via Giorgio Byron, was named after the poet in 1900 to commemorate his association with Livorno.
Fabio Roggiolani, a Green Party councillor in Livorno, said that the Villa Dupouy – formerly owned by Count Pietro Dupouy, a wealthy banker and also known as the Casa Rossa, or Red House – had been allowed to fall into disrepair and was nearly derelict. The 17th century two-storey villa boasts a once elegant façade with niches for statues. It has interior and exterior stone staircases and ceilings frescoed with cherubs and classical scenes. However the property, long uninhabited, has been subdivided into 15 apartments.
