© Edimedia di F. Filippi e C. Sas.

A city of artistic splendours and a glorious past, airy and cheerful despite the solemn grandeur of its monuments, Pisa lies along the wide, spectacular curve formed by the final stretch of the Arno.
The magnificence of its monuments reflects the economic and political brilliance the city enjoyed from the 11th to the 13th century, when its maritime power was at its height. For many long years the Marine Republic of Pisa held firm sway over the Mediterranean, boosting its trade with the East to which it transported iron from Elba and wood from the Apennines and from which it imported spices and silk, as well as architectural and decorative notions that were to blend with others of various provenance to create that highly distinctive style known as Romanesque Pisan.
Its age-old pride was not enough for it to withstand the Florentines, its bitter and ancient enemies, who conquered it in 1406. The Medici power transformed and readapted the urban spaces to satisfy its own needs, but did not stifle the city's great cultural vocation: Lorenzo the Magnificent reorganised the university, Cosimo I founded the order of the Knights of Saint Stephen there and Cosimo II in 1610 made Galileo, a native of Pisa, his highly honoured official philosopher.