La Sapienza (“the wisdom”) is the historic site of the University of Pisa, commissioned in the second half of the fifteenth century by Lorenzo il Magnifico and completed in the middle of the following century by Cosimo I de’ Medici. Since then, the didactic and study activity has never stopped in the many classrooms and reading rooms of the building and the comings and goings of generations of students, professors and illustrious scholars have been uninterrupted. Until 29th May 2012, when the building was closed to the public due to its seismic inability, which was revealed by the earthquake in Emilia.
The Evaluation of the Archaeological Interest of the area in which the Sapienza stands, carried out before the start of the restoration works on the building, as required by law, showed the very high potential of the entire area due to the presence, all around the university complex, of remains dating back to the Etruscan era (8th century BC). In 2015 the archaeological excavations began with the perfect synergy between the University of Pisa and the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Pisa and Livorno, which brought to light two medieval districts, which are still perfectly visible under the floors of the Sapienza: an isolated living area from the tenth to the mid-fourteenth century, with houses, a church and a cemetery separated by streets and alleys, and the Piazza del grano, the large city food market, built in the middle of the fourteenth century and then destroyed just over a century later to make room for the university complex.
As in the best examples of urban archeology, the restoration of the Sapienza University, in addition to restoring full functionality to the symbol monument of the Pisan University, has therefore also transformed into a unique opportunity to rediscover and make known to scholars and the general public a throbbing cross-section of daily life in the heart of medieval Pisa, which until now had only been filtered through the memory of written testimonies.
