San Zeno

The church of San Zeno was a former abbey built around 11th century as part of a Camaldolese monastery. It has been deconsecrated a while back and the building is now a museum, also used for exhibitions.
This is the last post from our self-imposed cyber-exile, but we have not yet finished with Pisa: in the future we will probably visit our cousins more often and on regular basis...

External links: San Zeno - Camaldolese (Wikipedia)

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Domus Mazziniana

This is the house where Giuseppe Mazzini spent the last years of his life and where he died on 10 March 1872. Practically rebuilt after the damages of the Second World War, it is now a museum dedicated to his life and works: the lettering on the facade of the building represent the verbose oath of the Giovine Italia (Young Italy), written by Mazzini himself in 1831 in Marseille.

External links: Giuseppe Mazzini - Young Italy (Wikipedia) - The oath of the Giovine Italia (Mazzini: His life, Writings, and Political Principles)

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Santa Maria della Spina

After the destruction of the Ponte Nuovo in 1400, it became the repository of a small piece of the Crown of Thorns, and took the name of Our Lady, of the Thorn. Brought from over seas by a Pisan merchant, the thorns were preserved with loving care in a little urn. Before faring again to distant lands he entrusted the precious relic to the care of his family. He never was heard of more, and one of his descendants, a Longhi, presented it to the church.

(“The Story of Pisa” by Janet Ross and Nelly Erichsen, 1909)

One of the wonders of Pisa is the small Gothic masterpiece of Santa Maria della Spina. The church was built around 1230 on the lower bank of the river Arno, but it was dismantled and rebuilt on the higher bank during the works for the construction of the nearby Solferino bridge, in 1871.

External links: Santa Maria della Spina (Wikipedia) - “The Story of Pisa” by Janet Ross and Nelly Erichsen (Archive.org)

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Via Santa Maria

At work re-asphalting Via Santa Maria, in Pisa. We don't see often this kind of works in Livorno: repaving streets is clearly not a priority here.

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Kinzica de' Sismondi

Whereupon, according to the legend, the Saracen Emir Moezz-Ibn-Badis, called Musa or Mugettus by the Italian chroniclers, left Sardinia, which he had conquered, and sailed up the Arno by night to attack Pisa in 1005. The houses on the left bank of the river were in flames and the inhabitants in full flight, when a woman of the Sismondi family named Chinzica rushed across the bridge to the palace of the Consuls and gave the alarm. A statue was erected to her when the burnt portion of the town was rebuilt and called after her.

(“The Story of Pisa” by Janet Ross and Nelly Erichsen, 1909)

The story is probably only a legend and the presumed statue of Kinzica, still visible outside Casa Tizzoni in Via San Martino, is almost certainly only a fragment of a 3rd-century Roman sarcophagus.

A more modern statue, called “Chinzica” and representing the heroine of the legend, is the work of the sculptor Angelo Ciucci and was erected in 2005 in the middle of Piazza Guerrazzi.

External links: “The Story of Pisa” by Janet Ross and Nelly Erichsen (Archive.org)

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Camposanto Monumentale

The Gothic tabernacle above the entance of the Camposanto Monumentale (Monumental Cemetery), at the northern edge of Piazza dei Miracoli. The Campo Santo, which translates as Holy Field, is a 13th-century cemetery built after the Fourth Crusade. Ubaldo de' Lanfranchi, archbishop of Pisa, decided that the Pisans were to be buried in the very earth of the Holy Land and commissioned a fleet of ships to bring home thousands of tons of soil from the hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus is believed to have been crucified.

See also: Santa Maria Assunta - Leaning Tower - Baptistry of St. John
External links: Piazza dei Miracoli - Leaning Tower - Baptistry - Camposanto Monumentale (Wikipedia)

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Nicola Pisano

The work of Nicola Pisano (c. 1220—c. 1284), along with that of his son Giovanni and other artists of their workshop, created a new sculptural style for the late 13th and the 14th centuries in Italy. This monument to him, made by the sculptor Salvino Salvini in 1864, is placed in front of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine (St. Mary of Carmel) in Corso Italia.

External links: Nicola Pisano (Wikipedia)

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