Republic of Pisa

A maritime republic that ruled the western Mediterranean before Genoa did, and lost so completely that its leaning tower is now the only thing anyone remembers. Pisa was a Roman port that silted up and rebuilt itself as a naval power, and in the eleventh century it cleared Muslim fleets from the Tyrrhenian, took Sardinia and Corsica, raided Palermo and Mahdia, and won trading quarters in Constantinople and the crusader states. Its wealth built the cathedral complex at the Campo dei Miracoli from 1063, whose campanile began leaning during construction because the subsoil could not carry it. The republic governed through consuls and later a podesta, and its maritime code influenced commercial law around the sea. Rivalry with Genoa over Corsica and Sardinia ended at Meloria in 1284, where the Genoese destroyed the Pisan fleet and took thousands of prisoners, many held for decades - a defeat the city never recovered from. Florence annexed Pisa in 1406 and it became a provincial town. Galileo was born there. The tower was stabilised by engineers in the 1990s. The republic controlled Corsica, Sardinia and the Tuscan coast at its height. Its cathedral complex is a World Heritage site. The tower took nearly two centuries to finish because of the interruptions. Pisan merchants held quarters in Antioch, Tyre and Acre. The city sits on the Arno, a few kilometres from the sea it once dominated, the harbour having silted up entirely. Its university was founded in 1343 and Galileo later taught there. The Republic of Pisa lasted from the eleventh century until 1406.

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