{"id":331000,"date":"2025-12-16T11:18:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T10:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unipi.it\/news\/pisa-citta-colonna\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T10:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T09:18:09","slug":"pisa-a-pillar-city-of-the-mediterranean-ranks-third-after-rome-and-istanbul-for-the-number-of-granite-columns","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.unipi.it\/en\/news\/pisa-a-pillar-city-of-the-mediterranean-ranks-third-after-rome-and-istanbul-for-the-number-of-granite-columns\/","title":{"rendered":"Pisa, a pillar city of the Mediterranean, ranks third after Rome and Istanbul for the number of granite columns"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are 201 granite columns in Pisa<\/strong>, located mostly in medieval buildings (10th\u201312th centuries) \u2014 an architectural presence that reflects the city\u2019s political and economic power<\/strong>. Pisa ranks second only to Rome and Istanbul in the number of granite shafts, far ahead of its rival Genoa, which has only 32. Some of these are spolia, granite columns reused from Roman buildings; others were produced specifically for the city\u2019s flourishing medieval construction sites. This new perspective on Pisa\u2019s history comes from a study published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences<\/em><\/strong>, authored by Claudia Sciuto of the MAPPA Lab in the Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge at the University of Pisa, together with Val\u00e9rie Andrieu and Pierre Rochette of Aix-Marseille University and the CNRS.<\/p>\n

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The heart of this stone heritage lies in Piazza dei Miracoli<\/strong>. The Cathedral alone contains 108 columns, many of them tall and massive, marked by the typical granite tones ranging from grey to pinkish hues and originating from quarries in the Tyrrhenian islands, the Anatolian peninsula and Egypt. The Leaning Tower also contributes to this mosaic: at the base of the bell tower, the survey identified six granite shafts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe use of spolia had an intentional symbolic value: it linked Pisa to the legacy of Rome and displayed the city\u2019s economic and naval strength<\/strong>,\u201d Sciuto explains. \u201cBut granite columns were also important because they represented a resource that was difficult to obtain and a powerful political symbol<\/strong>. Quarrying granite required complex extraction, demanding transport and great technical skill \u2014 so much so that the recovery and lifting of the shafts were celebrated in medieval sources, such as in Buscheto\u2019s epitaph on the fa\u00e7ade of the Cathedral.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pisa\u2019s 201 columns thus reflected the city\u2019s ability to control territories and trade across the Mediterranean<\/strong>. Some originated from quarries on Elba, Corsica and Sardinia<\/strong>. These columns are largely homogeneous in material and size \u2014 a sign of coordinated production specifically for Pisa\u2019s construction sites. Alongside these are the spolia, taken from reused Roman buildings, which could come from much greater distances, particularly Turkey and Egypt<\/strong>. Compared with quarried columns, spolia are distinguished by their greater variability in dimensions, with irregular heights and diameters reflecting their origins in different structures \u2014 making them immediately recognisable as reused elements.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe carried out the fieldwork in 2022 over a period of two months,\u201d Sciuto continues. \u201cIt was not a simple task: identifying and analysing all the visible and accessible granite columns in the city. We used a non-destructive analytical technique that allows for rapid and precise identification of granite provenance<\/strong> \u2014 a method that had never been applied before on an urban scale nor integrated with a historical-archaeological reading of the entire monumental context<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research was conducted as part of the project \u201cLe citt\u00e0 invisibili\u201d, funded through the 2018\u20132022 Department of Excellence programme of the Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge. Special thanks go to the restorers of the Opera del Duomo and to the Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape Heritage Authority for the provinces of Pisa and Livorno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are 201 granite columns in the city, an impressive presence that tells the story of Pisa\u2019s power, its trade networks and its political role as a \u201cnew Rome\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":327467,"menu_order":5,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"tag-notizie-persone":[2657],"tags_news":[2659,2306],"categorie":[159],"class_list":["post-331000","news","type-news","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-notizie-persone-claudia-sciuto","tags_news-archeology","tags_news-department-of-civilisation-and-form-of-knowledge","categorie-unipinews-en"],"yoast_head":"\nPisa, a pillar city of the Mediterranean, ranks third after Rome and Istanbul for the number of granite columns ~ UNIPI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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