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The quarter of San Martino (i.e. Saint Martin) on the Lungarno
Galilei, is full of a lot of old palaces, beautiful gardens and an
original church, the church of
Santo Sepolcro, a Romanic octagonal church of the XII century, built
to preserve the relics of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been brought here
from Jerusalem.
Inside
we have a stone well, to remember the hospital once part of the church and
the miracles of San Ubaldesca.
Between
the old palaces we can remember Palazzo
Lanfranchi with its big coat of arms, standing for the rich and
eminent Pisan family of Lanfranchi.
Another
Lungarno of the quarter of San Martino is the Lungarno
Fibonacci, from the name of an important Pisan mathematician. Here we
find the Fortezza Nuova or Cittadella Nuova, or as everybody call it the Giardino
Scotto (i.e. the Scotto Garden) a big green garden inside an old
fortification (Fortezza Sangallo) turned into a public garden (in 1930).
The name comes from the name of a rich family that acquired the
fortification in the end of the XVIII century.The via San Martino is full
of Palazzi Signorili (i.e. State Palaces for the Florentine and Pisan
Nobility). At the number 108 we have Palazzo Cevoli, where once Federico IV, king of Denmark
and Norway lived during a visit as guest of the rich Cevoli
family. A visit originated not only by political reasons, actually he had
met, seventeen years before a young woman (Maria Maddalena Trenta) of a
rich family of Lucca and felt in love with her, but he was a Protestant
and she a catholic so they could not marry. As a consequence she decide to
became a nun in the nunnery in Florence and he came back to Denmark. When
he became a king he decided to come back to Tuscany to see his lover in
the nunnery.
On
the Palace Cevoli there is a Latin inscription that record that visit and
inside we have frescoes about the Danish dynasty.
There
is another important palace in the Pisan memory, the Palazzo
of the family Tizzoni (i.e. The
Tizzoni Palace) with its marmorian high relief representing a young woman,
i.e. Kinzica
dei Sismondi, a legendary young woman who protected the city from an
attack of the Turk army in the XI century, or a
sarcophagus of a roman matron probably built during the III or IV century a. C.
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