Pisa Museo Aperto

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In 1561 Cosimo I de’ Medici founded the Holy Military Order of the Knights of Santo Stefano, as a tribute to the patron saint on whose feast day Cosimo had defeated his enemies in the battle of Montemurlo (2 august 1554). According to the ambitious plans of Cosimo, who later was designated grand duke (in 1569 the title was assigned to him by the pope with a bull), the new military Order was to become a strong maritime force, loyal to the Medici dinasty and able to rebalance the European political power in the Mediterranean in favour of Florence.

The Order’s naval base was first placed in the Elba Island, in Cosmopoli (the old name of Portoferraio) and remained there for about forty years before being transferred to Leghorn. Indeed at that time, in the early 17th century, grand duke Ferdinando I was promoting great urbanistic and architectural projects to transform the city of Leghorn. The development of its port not only as a mercantile call, but also as a military base was fully part of those projects. In a twenty years’ time Leghorn became the base for the war navy of the Order of Santo Stefano and consequently of the Medici. The port was progressively equipped with shipyards for galleys, which were placed next to the dockyard (the darsena) and the warehouses. Across the 16th and the 17th century another building was added, the so-called “bagno delle galere”, a huge quadrangular structure, with a water tank and a well, an hospital and an apothecary’s shop (called “spezieria”). In this building complex there were lodgings for captains, crews and slaves.

Doubtless the Order of Santo Stefano was created by Cosimo I on the model of the more famous and powerful Order of the Knights of Malta. Just a decade after the foundation of the Order of Santo Stefano, one of the greatest naval battles in the history of the modern era took place, the battle of Lepanto (1571), where the Christian fleets, including the galleys of the Order of Santo Stefano, faced the Turkish armada.

To provide the Order with a prestigious seat and a center for planning its activities and tranining future knights, the Medici promoted a vast architectural project which changed the face of the square now renamed Piazza dei Cavalieri (Knights’ Square), while earlier it was called Piazza degli Anziani or Piazza delle Sette Volte (Elders’ Square or Seven Vaults’ Square).

At the end of 1561 Cosimo I entrusted the Florentine architect Giorgio Vasari with building and restoring some palaces intended for housing the Order’s offices. The core of the new citadel created for the Order was represented by the Palazzo della Carovana and by the church of Santo Stefano, also known as Chiesa dei Cavalieri (the knights’ church).  A statue of grand duke Cosimo I, made by Pietro di Francavilla (1596), was put on the same square. Clearly there was a political and propagandistic end under all this architectural and artistic plan: the symbols of the ancient republican liberty and of the communal government were replaced by new monuments celebrating the Medicis’ power. It was a new ideological code particularly aiming at celebrating a double symbolic meaning through a careful figurative and architectural selection: on one side the Order of Santo Stefano as bulwark and supreme defender of Christianity against the Turks, on the other the Medici dinasty as founder of the Order itself.

The Order’s navy, continuously engaged in military actions, conducting a sort of guerrilla warfare on the sea, with fast raids reaching as far as the Barbaresque coast (nowadays the coasts of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). During all the Medicis’ age this navy was able to accomplish the tasks for which it had been founded: that is protection of Tuscan shipping through defensive and offensive military actions against Barbaresque and Turkish pirates, sacking the enemies and defending Christian merchants.
With the rise of the Lorraine dinasty, the grand duchy’s maritime policy considerably changed and the Order of Santo Stefano underwent a heavy reduction of its tasks. Besides these latter were changed. Privateering and warfare against the Barbaresque and the Turks were almost utterly interrupted. The Knights of Santo Stefano, particularly under grand duke Pietro Leopoldo, were rather to become an administrative élite, a future ruling class.