The Fazioli factory is close to the cradle of the piano.

ECONOMIST: A tale of three piano makers

Machinery was stripped out, the factory demolished, the site developed to a design by Renzo Piano, a leading Italian architect, and the Academia Barilla opened in 2004, its basement housing the library.

ECONOMIST: Barilla's cookery library: Food for thought | The

The city is still sprinkled with musicians who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, when New Orleans was a hit factory cranking out million-selling records by Fats Domino, Little Richard, Ray Charles and Huey (Piano) Smith ("Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu").

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