Collegio Ferdinando, via Santa Maria

Particolare Collegio Ferdinando (L. Corevi, Comune di Pisa)

The college is part of a renewal program of the University of Pisa, the main study centre of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Ferdinand I wanted to open its doors to all deserving students, even those who did not have the opportunity to pay for their studies. His father, Cosimo I, had already intervened in this sense, opening the Sapienza College in the convent of San Francesco. So, in 1593, the Ferdinand College was inaugurated at no. 102 of via Santa Maria. The great portal in marble and the bust of the Grand Duke are works by Raffaele Pagni. The students had strict rules to follow, the purpose, for which the College was erected, being the acquiring of Piety, good morals, and sciences [...] by the orders established by the Founders [...] They are always obliged to attend the Schools morning and evening, and those who will not attend the public lectures morning and evening in Sapienza, every time they will be in contravention, will be deprived of the College for the time decided by the Rector. Those who attend the lessons but disrupt them with clamouring, hitting, hissing or in any other way, after being warned, will be punished not only with the deprivation of the College for a year, but also, being such rascals, the exile from Pisa.

In 1846, from October to April, the couple of English poets, Elisabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning lived in Pisa, together with their little dog Flush (see Virginia Woolf at the Nettuno hotel), in an apartment of the former Collegio Ferdinando.

Cit. Here we are, all alone, in a house built by Vasari, a stone's throw from the Leaning Tower and the Duomo, enjoying absolute isolation and planning the works suitable to the same. I am very happy and I am very well... we have attended a Mass at the Campo Santo and made the due pilgrimage to Palazzo Lanfranchi, to retrace the footsteps of Byron and Shelley... (...) This city is beautiful and extremely restful: 'Makes you fall asleep in the sun', as Dickens said.

(Elizabeth B.B. in a letter to Richard H. Horne; Pisa, 4 December 1846)