Shortly about Pisa and his History:
read about our Folkore
Althought Pisa, like
many ancient cities, grew up along the banks of a river, its urban development
was complex. In the Middle Ages, prior to the year 1000, the entire city was
comprised in what is now the Santa Maria quartiere. As the military and
economic power of the Maritime republic grew, so did the population and the
city itself, the circle of of the city walls was extended (by Cocco Griffi on
XII cent.) until it encompassed much of the area the south of the river: was
created one new district. Later the city unification followed and the three old
existing quarteri came into four: Santa Maria, San Francesco, located to the
north of the river, San Martino and Sant'Antonio, to the south.
So Pisa is divided
into two parts by the Arno River, 15 km away from the Tyrrhenean coast, 80 km
away from Florence, the regional capital, and 300 km from Rome; Pisa has a
number of archeological remains dating the town back to Etruscan people and to
Rome.
The
city gained in importance from the end of the first millenium, when it became a
great Marine Republic with commercial influence on the coast of the Tyrrhenean
Sea, Corsica, Sardinia and the Baleari Islands.
Centuries
of history lay under four metres of alluvial mud near the Leaning Tower: in
occasion of excavations for a new train-line on December 1998, the greatest
assortment of ancient Roman and Pisan
ships (18 units datable from 5th cent. B. C. to the 5th cent. A. D.) appeared
on the surface. They are very well preserved, with their load of pots, tools
vases, merchandise and, for the first time, animals and humans rests. It
confirms the presence of a fluvial harbour in Pisa in that era.
Pisan power and
wealth found material expression in the magnificent 12th cent. Cathedral, built
in the new Pisan Romanesque style, for religious functions and meetings for the
representatives of the people in the Middle Ages. This new style was inspired
to the design and decorations of the Roman basilicas and to Islamic
architectural and decorative motives.
This
is shown in the use of marbles taken from Roman monuments, in the Islamic
design of the Cathedral's dome, in the Gothic taste of the sculptures of the
Baptistery etc... Similar cultural influences could be found in many other
churches in Pisa, where the same artists of the square worked. Inside the
buildings that make up the Square the Museum of the Sinopites and the Cathedral
Works Museum worth a long visit; some of the churches you can't miss are along
the Arno banks: S.Maria della Spina and S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno. Some other are
near the center of the city as S. Cecilia, S. Francesco, S. Pierino, S. Michele
in Borgo: these are splendid examples of the pisan-romanesque style.
You
can also visit the San Matteo museum and the "Arsenale delle Galee" on Lungarno
Simonelli, where in ancient times the ships belonging to the Kinghts of Santo
Stefanoused to be armied.
The
role of Pisa is fundamental and not only in the architecture: Nicola Pisano and
his son Giovanni are the beginners of a new era in sculpture....similar to the
one Dante and Petrarca initiated in literature, which would influence the great
artists of the following centuries like Brunelleschi, Donatello, Michelangelo,
Giotto.
Pisa is also Galileo Galilei's birthplace.
The
decadence of Pisa's importance began in the 13th cent., after Pisa suffered a
serious defeat by Genoa, and in the 14th century, when it was conquered by
Florence. Now Pisa is a quite and gentle town, a little just over 100.000
inhabitants, whose most important cultural poles are the famed University (attended since the 12th
century) and the Scuola Normale Superiore, founded in 1810
by Napoleon, who modelled it after the Parisian University, with the same name.
In Pisa there's the Sant'Anna School of University
Studies and Doctoral Research.
These
two centres of learning, the University and the Scuola Normale, have continued
to excel in the spheres of scientific and classical studies. Some brilliant
minds are: Antonio Pacinotti, who built the first dynamo and laid the
way for the electric motor; the poets Giovanni Pascoli and Giosue'
Carducci, the Nobels Enrico Fermi and, recently, Carlo Rubbia.
Reading
Personalities you can read
about subjects who lived in Pisa in different periods, You can read how the
city is changed in centuries.
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