Historical notes
Gia ‘from the year one thousand, showed signs of Pisa alive by’ cultural relations with the Islamic world and the Byzantine Empire, and expressed personality ‘of the level of Buscheto, Burgundio and Fibonacci. The Universita ‘degli Studi was founded by papal bull in 1343. The first faculties’ activities were Theology, Law (canon and civil) and Medicine. The history of the University ‘and the city’, since then, they were very connected. The Florentine conquest of the fifteenth century, for example, corresponded to a decay of the University. On the contrary, with the advent of Lorenzo de ‘Medici, there was a reprise of the University of Pisa, but the subsequent rebellion and the siege of 1509 led to a real break-up of the University’.
It was only the most ‘later, with the Duchy and the Grand Duchy of Cosimo I, the university, restored and reorganized, became, for at least a century, a great center of culture and education for the whole European continent: next to the famous Galileo Galilei worked some of the major personality ‘of the time. At that time also dates the founding of the first botanical garden in the world (together with that of Padua) by the botanist Luca Ghini.
After the glow, some decades of activity ‘is not very significant, and then, in the second half’ of the eighteenth century, a renewed interest by the new grand Habsburg-Lorraine contribute ‘to the enrichment of the museum and the library and saw the realization of the astronomical observatory , the chair of chemistry and physics and the resumption of the teaching of surgery.
In the ensuing Napoleonic period were added to further teachings and founded the Scuola Normale Superiore. In the first half ‘of the nineteenth century also date the creation of two’ new ‘right’: Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine.
In 1848 a battalion of volunteers participated university ‘in the battle of Curtatone, the episode marks forever the hat of the university – the traditional goliards – which, in memory of those killed appear to date with the tip cut off. Since then, the Universita ‘Pisa always kept up his name with teachers and learners of great value in the field of the world (among other things, is proud of its graduates of two Nobel prizes, Fermi and Rubbia).
In the sixties saw the birth of a new School of Advanced Studies, the St. Anna, and deepened ‘the relations of exchange with National Research Council, Pisa, un’insediamento counts of absolute prestige. The years of protest saw the Pisan students very engaged in the renewal that swept the universities ‘and companies’ in many countries of the world, in an indirect but unmistakable confirmation of vitality ‘and vivacity’. Since 1984, the University ‘- unique in Italy – maintains its own Palace of Congresses.
Today, the University comprises 11 faculties’ for a total of 33 degree programs and 44 departments, has nearly 42,000 subscribers in a city ‘of about 100,000 inhabitants., And with users who’ made up mainly of young people from the coast west of the southern Tuscany and Liguria, but also from many other regions especially in the South of the Peninsula, with an additional several hundred foreign students from European countries, the USA and many African and Asian countries. The presence of students and ‘always been an aspect central to the life in Pisa, since the beginning of the lessons was publicly announced by the tolling of the tower of the camp, located a short distance from the Palace of Wisdom. The presence of the University ‘and its students to Pisa is an irreplaceable element of wealth, driving to town life.