CAR AND VAN RENTAL WITH DRIVER IN TUSCANY
VISITS AROUND TUSCANY
PISA
Pisa is situated about ten km. from the sea, in a vast alluvial plain protected by Monte Pisano and it’s divided in two by the river Arno.
Pisa is a town with uncertain and ancient origins ( 8th. – 7th. Century b.C.).
We start to have more detailed news about Pisa when it became a Roman municipium first ( 89 bC.) and a flourishing Roman Colony later (30 b.C.). Mainly thanks to its fortunate location, being at a center of a network of sea, river and land routes and also thanks to the availability in town of a great variety of agricultural products as well as wood and stone building materials, arriving from its inland territories, Pisa acquired great importance and prosperity during the Roman domination.
In the 7th Century AD Pisa passed under the Longobard rule and being the only opening to the sea in the area, it helped it to gain always more and more importance as a port town.
In the 11th. Century Pisa became a Free Town, thus starting its most important developments, that lead it to become, one of the major maritime powers in the Mediterranean sea, during the following three centuries. Its supremacy lasted almost till to the end of the 13th century, when it lost the Battaglia della Meloria (the battle of the Meloria) in a fight with Genoa over the control of the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, thus losing its military and commercial supremacy in the area.
During the 11th and the 12th century it were started the works for building those major monuments, which have rendered Pisa famous all over the world i.e. the Cathedral, the Baptistery and the Tower. For the realization of these masterpieces we have to thank the brilliant minds of Nicola Pisano, his son Giovanni and Arnolfo di Cambio.
In the years between the 14th and the 19th century, the town was ruled by the families of the Medici and the Lorena and in the year 1860, with a popular plebiscite, Pisa joined the kingdom of Italy.
Today Pisa is one of the major destinations for tourists in Tuscany, which come to admire its gorgeous Piazza dei Miracoli (i.e. Squares of the miracles), a perfect and harmonic ensemble that has rendered this square one of the most beautiful ones all over the world.
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