This is the century of travellers, of the rediscovery of the city for its beauty, mild climate and the possibly excessive tranquillity. “Silent”, “deserted”, even “dead” are some of the meaningful adjectives that reoccur in the descriptions written by foreign visitors of the time.
In the course of the 18th century the final transformation of the Lungarni into the foreigners’ quarter had taken place. Palaces were converted into hotels or lodgings, elegant shops and cafés opened at street level, everything was geared to cater for the strolls of the many that spent their winters in Pisa.
From the point of view of city planning, the 19th century taste for restoration determined mostly debatable actions on the artistic and architectural medieval heritage that survived the 16th century Medicean redevelopment. A misunderstood concept of improvement determined decorations, buildings and city areas to be heavily remodelled in the style of french architect Viollet leDuc. There was on one hand a wish to “perfect” the medieval style, thus rebuilding elements of a totally fictional Middle Ages, as with the old Palazzo Granducale, the church of San Felice or, even more conspicuously, the Piazza del Duomo, where it was even decreed that all buildings around the square had to be in the medieval pisan style. On the other hand though, in the name of the dignity of a city that was to become modern, there was no hesitation in consistenly demolishing the medieval city walls to open a large road to the railway station. The real Middle Ages were destroyed to make room for their fictional version, chasing a past, by now distant, in a city that had turned its back to the sea and was detaching itself from its river too. The parapet walls built alongside the river in 1869 transformed not only the appearance of the Lungarni but also changed their relationship with the city, destroying moorings, calls, washplaces and troughs. The last devastation took place in 1872 when the chapel of Santa Maria della Spina, threatened by the river’s vicinity, was dismantled to be rebuilt a little above, and freely reinterpreted. An undertaking that did not fail to cause the indignation of John Ruskin, who was passing through Pisa at the time.
From original concept of Mirko Delcaldo & Sandro Petri
Web design and development by M.Delcaldo & S.Petri
Screenplay by Stefano Nannipieri & Luisa Traina