Palazzo Salviati and the Pear, via San Martino

Cippo etrusco piriforme reimpiego antico _ Via San. Martino(G. Bettini, Comune di Pisa)

The inscription on the lintel reads Averardus et Antonius Philippi Salviati fecerunt. The building was owned by the Ciampolini family (their coats of arms are still present on the façade), Pisan merchants, but in 1438 became the residence and bank of the Salviati, a wealthy family of merchants, cloth producers and bankers of Florentine origin. Since 1590, thanks to Averardo and Filippo Salviati, the palace was completely restored, following the wave of the renovatio urbis started by Cosimo I.
The project was entrusted to Jacopo Piccardi da Rovezzano, collaborator of Giambologna and Francavilla, who created a façade with a remarkable plasticity effect, due to the volume of the frames, to the effect of the ashlar and the kneeling windows. The coat of arms on the triangular tympanum of the main portal is the one of the Salviati family. The medieval structures are clearly visible on the side of via Kinzica, where we can recognise some single-lancet windows as well rounded and lowered arches.

Galileo's philosopher: Filippo Salviati was born in Florence in 1583 and, while receiving an education aimed at the financial control of the family, he concentrated his studies on mathematics and physics. He was a friend of Galileo Galilei, who dedicated his letters on sunspots Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari to him in 1613. Filippo was an academic from the Lincei and the Crusca, but his fame is mainly due to the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems of Galilei, of which Filippo is the protagonist as a philosopher free from the dogmas of the authorities and supporter and defender of the Copernican system.

The pear is now located near Palazzo Salviati: a provision of the Magistrate of the Ditches and Roads Office of the City of Pisa dated 26 February 1692 established that the Verrucana stone pear (actually in marble)... [was to be removed] from where it was, in the middle of the road, and be placed beside the wall of the said Pious house of Mercy. The pear, a term used in Pisa in the twelfth century, is an Etruscan headstone located on the corner between Via la Pera and via San Martino, in front of the domus of the Del Bagno family. The headstone was located on a column about 70 centimeters high and was already a real monument in the seventeenth century. According to the legend, it represents a trophy of the war virtue of the de Balneo family during the first Crusade. In fact, the pear is the testimony of an Etruscan past of the city, an Acheruntica stone from necropolis of Barbaricina, a suburb to the west of Piazza dei Miracoli.