l'isa is wealthy and in a thriving condition. Cottons are largely monufactured. Oil and marble from the vicinity constitute important shipments. The city wns formerly a port on the sea, but the silting, np of the Arno caused Leg horn to grow in importance. There are fine. mar ket hall-, an extensive ho,pital, and four the The rich gardened plain around Pisa, lined with lonely poplars. is interesting despite The population of the commune of Pisa in 1901 was 61.32], of whom only about half resided within the city.
The city was probably of Etruscan origin. It fell to Rome in n.r. ISO. The Romans embellished it and made it important. About A.D. 1000 it be came a formidable commercial and naval rival of Venice and Genoa. Strongly religions, it played in that era a prominent ride in the defense and diffusion of Christianity, the Republic taking a conspicuous part in the Crusades. Its warring citizens took Sardinia from the Saracens, and finally destroyed their naval power in the :Medi terranean. Corsica and the Balearic Islands fell to them. The city was in the full Bower of its greatness in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
It held the coast from near Genoa tee the vicinity of Rome, It had many contests with Lucca and Florence: it was the fall of the llohenstaufens was at length a blow to the city, and it met decisive defeat by Genoa in a great sea-fight off Meloria, near Leghorn, in 1284. A few years later the Genoese destroyed its harbor. It began to decline, gradually losing all its possessions, and in 1406 'it fell under the sway of Florence. It shook off the Florentine yoke in 1494, only to be resubjected in 1509. Henceforth its history was part of that of the Florentine State and of Tuscany. About 1600 Pisa had only about 15,000 inhabitants. In the height of its prosperity it had no less than 150,000.
In art history Pisa earned a worthy name un til supplanted by Florence. Its cathedral marks the beginning of Italian art of the Middle Ages. The only branch of art, however, in which Pisa left an important influenee was architecture (particularly ecclesiastical architecture), though it gave no little impetus. to sculpture, being the native city of Niccola Pisano and his son Gio vanni. Consult Schfibring, Pisa (Leipzig, 1902).