San Miniato – TOWN OF PISA
TOWN TEL 0571-4061 – Fax 0571/406234
Victims ADDRESS Via Duomo, 6-56027
HOW TO GET THERE:
AUTO: Pisa-Florence highway, exit at San Miniato.
BUS: CPT-town, destination Pontedera, and even extra-CPT, in San Miniato.
TRAIN: Pisa-Florence, get off at San Miniato – Fucecchio, and CPT-town towards San Miniato.
DESCRIPTION:
The name derives from the Christian martyr Miniato which was dedicated to an old church in the sixth century and around which were built the first urban structures.
Since the time of Otto I was the seat of the Imperial Vicar.
Here he lived at various times the court of Frederick I Barbarossa, so today is called San Miniato al German and Frederick II, in the first half of the thirteenth century, made it the cornerstone of a strategic control of central Tuscany, Via Francigena and the Via Pisana.
Frederick created a modern defensive system based on a trapezoidal wall circuit, the keep, connected to a fortress on the top of the hill.
Here stood the imperial palace, founded after the mid-twelfth century and the Cathedral of St. Mary, documented in the late thirteenth century.
The urban configuration of San Miniato in the Middle Ages was based on two poles, the imperial fortress and the village.
In the sixteenth century a number of civic buildings such as Palazzo Formichini, Little Palace already Franchini, Roffia Palace, Palace Bonaparte and finally the seminary denote the artistic influence of the Florentine Renaissance painting, and also sees the production artists linked to the Medici court as Jacopo Chimenti said l ‘ Empoli and Ludovico Cardi, called Cigoli.