Pisa

History

Few towns in the world can boast of a past as splendid as the one of Pisa. In the course of more than ten centuries, its citizens have left a permanent mark on the history and the history and the art of western civilization. The history of Pisa is marked by an impressive series of successes: the early fights against the Saracens established Pisa's dominant position in the Mediterranean; the active participation in the Crusades led to a great expansion of its maritime trade and opened Pisa to the culture of the Moslem world; the foundation of a powerful Republic and of one of the oldest European Universities where the famous scientist Galileo Galilei was a student and later a professor. All these important events have had a great influence on Italian and European history and give Pisa, a town that is still "a mesure d'homme", the right to be considered one of the capitals of the western world.

Art

From Pisa you can see, when the sky is clear, the imposing chain of the Alpi Apuane and the world famous marble quarries of Carrara. From these quarries comes the white stone with which the buildings of Pizza del Duomo (Cathedral square) were built. Italy and Europe are full of beautiful cities, but few have reached the perfection and harmony of Pisan architecture. The Pisan artists introduced a new architectural style which is known today as "Romanico Pisano" (Pisan romanesque): you can admire it in many churches, first of all in the splendid Cathedral where the alternation of white and black bands, the sequence of blind arches, the succession of "loggette" create an atmosphere of unsurpassed beauty.

Surroundings

Pisa has often described as a radiant city, a serene and horizontal town without any of those sharp contrasts which characterize many medieval Tuscan and Italian towns. What strikes you most in Pisa are the wide spaces, the brightness of the summer sun, the placid flow of the river Arno under the bridges, the salty breeze coming from the sea. Pisa has a mild relaxing climate as so many visitors - Bryon, Shelly, Leopardi to name only a few - have remarked. Surrounded by its mountains, yet close to the sea, Pisa will enchant you with its special atmosphere and will make you dream of its old cosmopolitan life open to all influences coming from North and South, from East and West.

A town both small and big

Pisa is situated at the centre of the "Piana di Pisa", the largest plain in all Tuscany, a wide and fertile alluvional territory limited by the two main rivers of the region, the Arno and the Serchio, where they are approaching the sea. Pisa has benefited since immemorial time from a privileged geographical position, which has favoured trading with distant places and with the whole of Tuscany.

A melting pot for different people, different cultures and traditions, the towns has preserved trough its long history its open and cosmopolitan spirit. Inside the comparatively small inner centre, alongside the extraordinary buildings of the Republic of Pisa, one can still see traces of the Etruscan and Roman past, but also the wide squares, the renaissance and baroque churches and palaces built by the Florentine during the XVIth and XVIIth century. Outside the old city walls, residential areas, research institutions and industrial buildings were developed at the end of the XIXth and especially the XXth centuries. So Pisa you can find almost anything; the narrow and dark medieval streets in the historical centre, the hidden but elegant baroque churches, the magnificent architectures of the Pisan-Romanesque period, the modern structures of today's Pisa.

Today the economical and social character of Pisa reflects the spirit of a town, which is receptive to all new stimuli. Pisa numbers about 92.000 inhabitants many of which are students coming from other regions to study at its famous university. The economy is mostly service oriented: besides the university and the hospital - both of very high scientific level - you can find elegant shops, commercial centres and small industries. The International Galileo Galilei airport is the most active in Tuscany and one of the most important and safe in Italy.
Pisa is in sense an anomalous city: a provincial town with a cosmopolitan vocation, whose influence extends to the costal part of Tuscany, which looks to Pisa for its technical and specialist needs.

It is a crowded town too, full of students, tourists, shops and offices. Of course there are problems too: the traffic is heavy, the cost of real estate is high, but these problems are in a sense the legacy of an old past and the town of the new millennium is perhaps not to dissimilar from the Pisa of its golden time crowded with merchants and sailors of every language and religion, coming to Pisa every country.