Pisa

Pisa's name is most often traced to an Etruscan word meaning "mouth", for its position near the mouth of the Arno, and excavations in the 1980s and 1990s, including the 5th-century BC tomb of an Etruscan prince, confirmed its Etruscan origins. It became a Roman colony in 180 BC and a municipium in 89 BC. The city was once on the shore, but silt from the Arno and the Serchio pushed the coast west: Strabo put it 4 km from the sea, and today it lies nearly 10 km inland, though ships long sailed up the river to its quays.

Its power as one of the four great maritime republics peaked in the 11th and 12th centuries, when Pisan fleets fought across the Mediterranean and, in 1136, sacked Amalfi. Trade and plunder paid for the cathedral and the other monuments of the Piazza dei Miracoli. The decline began on 6 August 1284, when Genoa destroyed the Pisan fleet at Meloria; in 1290 the Genoese wrecked Porto Pisano. Pisa, always Ghibelline, still defeated Florence at Montecatini in 1315, but after a long siege the Florentines took the city in 1405 when a corrupted captain opened the San Marco gate at night. A later revolt held out against Florentine troops for fifteen years before the city fell again.

Under Florence Pisa became a city of learning. Its university was founded in 1343, and the physicist Galileo Galilei was born in the city. Napoleon founded the Scuola Normale in 1810, and the Sant'Anna School followed in 1987. The city suffered repeated destruction in the Second World War. The Piazza dei Miracoli was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, and engineers stabilised the leaning tower between 1993 and 2001.

Pisa is a university city first: the University of Pisa is especially known for physics, mathematics, engineering and computer science, and the Scuola Normale and the Sant'Anna School are among Italy's elite research institutions. Students organise parties, shows and cultural events and fill the central streets at night, and away from the Piazza dei Miracoli their presence sets the tone of the city.

The year's great civic moments come in June. On the evening of 16 June the Luminara di San Ranieri lights the façades along the Lungarni with thousands of small candles, called lampanini in the local speech, before fireworks and a night of celebration; the next day is the feast of the patron saint. On the last Saturday of the month the Gioco del Ponte, a costumed contest on the Ponte di Mezzo with roots possibly in the 1200s, revived in 1927, sets the two halves of the city against each other. Pisa also takes part in the Regatta of the Historical Maritime Republics with Amalfi, Genoa and Venice. Local dialect poetry is kept alive by competitions such as the Cèa d'Oro.

Pisa has more than twenty historic churches besides the cathedral and at least two other leaning towers, at San Nicola and San Michele. Keith Haring's Tuttomondo, painted in 1989 on the wall of Sant'Antonio Abate, is a much-loved modern landmark. Football is the main sport, and Pisa SC play at the Arena Garibaldi, opened in 1919.

About 90,000 people live in the comune, and around 195,000 in the wider Pisan area that takes in Calci, Cascina, San Giuliano Terme, Vecchiano and Vicopisano. The University of Pisa alone has tens of thousands of students, a large number for a city of this size, and they fill the central streets in term time.

The economy rests on education and research, the university hospital, tourism and the airport, the main one for Tuscany. Most visitors come for a few hours to see the tower and leave, so daily life in the centre — markets in Piazza delle Vettovaglie, shopping on Corso Italia and Borgo Stretto, the evening walk along the Lungarni — runs largely apart from the crowds on the Piazza dei Miracoli.

The Arno divides the old city into a northern half, with the cathedral, the Piazza dei Cavalieri and the university buildings, and a southern half around Corso Italia and the station; their rivalry is played out in the Gioco del Ponte. Newer residential districts spread beyond the walls, and the city's own seaside resort, Marina di Pisa, lies about 10 km west at the mouth of the Arno.

Pisan cooking mixes the sea, the river and the countryside. A popular dish is cecina, a very thin savoury cake of chickpea flour, which the Genoese once called "the gold of the Pisans"; legend dates its invention to the age of the maritime republics. In Pisa it is usually eaten stuffed into small focaccia.

Traditional dishes include long pasta dressed with anchovies and turnip greens, bean soups and bordatino, a peasant dish of puréed beans with cavolo nero and maize flour, pasta or rice with clams, and frog soup. Fish recipes use grey mullet from the mouth of the Arno, grilled; boiled weever; and grilled salt cod with chickpeas. Cèe alla pisana, baby eels, were once the city's emblematic dish, but catching, selling and eating them is now banned.

Evenings revolve around aperitivo, a drink with a light buffet, in the bars around Piazza delle Vettovaglie, Piazza Gambacorti and Via delle Case Dipinte, and the Caffè dell'Ussero has served the Lungarno since 1775.