Pisa Museo Aperto

Location(s)

Towards the end of the 14th century the Pisan shipyards were loosing their old function. At that time the city was preparing itself to resist Florentine attacks, without mentioning the threat represented by the Genoese. Consequently in those years the shipyards were increasingly transformed into fortified defensive structures. So the area came to be known as “Cittadella” (citadel). It was only after the Florentine conquest in 1406 that Pisan shipyards starte to work again at a fast rate. They were enlarged in order to meet the increasing demand for new  galleys. Indeed, the ruling class of Florence aimed at creating a commercial fleet on the model of the Venetian one, a fleet able to sail every year along all the main Mediterranean routes and even along some of the Atlantic ones, passing the so-called “Heracles’ Columns” (the Straits of Gibraltar), towards Flanders and England. The new Florentine policy clearly revealed itself with the simultaneous purchase both of the Pisan Port and of Leghorn in 1421 from the Genoese authorities, who had temporarily owned them in the previous years. Immediately after a new body of magistrates was elected, called “Consoli del Mare” (Sea Consuls), as their Pisan forerunners, charged with the task of directing sea trade.

The old republican shipyards were enlarged exploiting the already existing dock and using local skilled and experienced craftsmen. The first galleys sailing under a Florentine flag set off in summer 1422. From then on, until 1480, the convoys of Florentine galleys travelled all over the Mediterranean and even on the Atlantic route, to the Levant, the Maghrib, the Midi, Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, along the Portuguese coast, Galicia, Gascony, as far as Bruges, Sandwich and Southampton.
Florence adopted for its commercial navy the Venetian model, directed by the State, a model that could guarantee safe, regular and comparatively fast commercial travels. Above all it allowed to organize under a precisely planned calendar all commercial exchanges with Eastern and Western Mediterranean and with Northern Europe. The convoys travelled escorted by war galleys, well armed and full of soldiers. The calendar of departures and arrivals, as well as the routes to be followed, were decided by the Republic. For each travel captains had to charter their galley from the Republic, paying a certain amount of money to the State treasury, while they earned money selling places on board of the ship to merchants and passengers.