Pisa (town)

City in Tuscany, Italy, on the River Arno, 70 km/43 mi west of Florence; population (2001 est) 85,400. Industries include tourism, engineering, and the production of pharmaceuticals, glass, and textiles. Its famous campanile (bell tower), the Leaning Tower of Pisa (1173; repaired 1990–2001), is 55 m/180 ft high and about 4.1 m/13.5 ft off the perpendicular, the foundations being only about 3 m/10 ft deep and built on unstable ground.

History
Archaeological finds testify to the presence of the Etruscans in the area between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. The port at the edge of the settlement presented an ideal place to locate a navy, and the Roman fleet used the port from which they launched attacks against Corsica, Sardinia, and the coastal zones of Spain. In order to protect Pisa, they built walls to surround the settlement. With the fall of the Roman Empire, Pisa passed first under the Germanic Lombards and then under the Franks. By the 11th century the city was a powerful and independent maritime republic, and included Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands in its dominions. The crushing defeat of the Pisan fleet by the Genoese off Merolia in 1284 robbed the town of its power. In 1399 it came into the hands of the Visconti family. As a Ghibelline centre in the 13th and 14th centuries, Pisa was also persistently at war with Florence, to which it fell in 1406. The city regained its independence in 1494 but fell again to Florence in 1509. Pisa was subsequently ruled by the Medicis who built the Aqueduct of Asciano (1601) and the Canal of the Navicelli between Pisa and Livorno (1603). In the early 1630s a fierce plague raged through the city. Since the 16th century the population has declined considerably. Pisa suffered devastating destruction during World War I and was further effected by flood of the Arno River in 1966.