Galileo's birthplace in Pisa

GALILEO'S BIRTHPLACE IN PISA

Galileo's birthplace: the three-story enigma

Over the centuries Galileo Galilei's birthplace in Pisa has been located in various locations. Professor Alberto Del Guerra, in an intervention prepared on a meeting dedicated to the relationship between the scientist and the city promoted by the City of Pisa, tries to retrace the stages of the search for the birthplace of Galileo Galilei from the earliest indications of the end 800 until the final location.

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Galileo, a fortress house
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564 by Vincenzo Galileo and Giulia Ammannati, who had married in Pisa in 1562. As evidenced by the book of baptism preserved at the Pisa Cathedral, Galileo was baptized "in Chapella di S. Andrea". In Pisa there was the Chapel of S. Andrea in Kinseca, that of the Fortress, the current Sangallo Fortress. Hence the first hypothesis of the '800s of Galileo's Birth in Fortress,' which resumed the tradition that Galileo's father was a man of arms, soldier or sergeant. In 1864, on the occasion of the III centenary of the birth, there was a commemorative plaque, now gone scattered.

Galileo House Bocca
It was later recognized that Galileo's father was not a man of arms, but a valued musician. In November 1563 Vincenzo Galilei signed a rental contract for a house owned by the Bocca Family in Pisa, where he went to live with his wife Giulia Ammannati and where he held music lessons. And here comes the second hypothesis, which placed the Galileo birthplace right in the house owned by the Mouth Family. Even in this case a tombstone was placed in the 3rd centenary of Galileo's death and is still visible at the corner between Borgo Largo and Via Mercanti.

Galileo, Ammannati house
However, it was still up to the problem of the parish where Galileo had been baptized: in fact, in the baptismal act of Galileo is written ".... in Chapella di S. Andrea" and no mention is made of the parish of San Michele in Borgo, to which the house of the Mouth in Via Mercanti was concerned. The solution was found fifty years ago by Professor Giorgio Del Guerra, a medical and scholar of History of Medicine and the History of Pisa. In Pisa there were two chapels of S. Andrea: St. Andrea of Kinseca (that of the Fortezza) and St. Andrea "foris porta". In the parish of Saint Andrea "foris porta" was the home of the grandparents of Galileo Galilei, home of Ammannati, where the home of the great scientist Pisa was finally placed with reasonable certainty. This house is at the current civic number 24 and 26 of Via Giuseppe Giusti.

Alberto Del Guerra

Source: unipi.it