Scienza militare e cultura dell’Antico nella Cittadella Nuova di Pisa di Giuliano da Sangallo

Among the many fortresses built by Giuliano da Sangallo and his brother Antonio the Elder, the Cittadella Nuova in Pisa is the one where Giuliano was more autonomous. This is, moreover, the last important building whose construction was directly followed by the architect. Between 1509 and 1512 the architect reworked deeply a former military structure devised by Filippo Brunelleschi and Antonio Manetti in the previous century, designing also a new keep with four bastions watching the via Fiorentina, a great bulwark watching the river, and other substantial improvements of the fortress. In Scienza militare e cultura dell’Antico nella Cittadella Nuova di Pisa di Giuliano da Sangallo, the Author discusses the features of the above mentioned military structures, and particularly those of the new keep added by Giuliano, with its many interior rooms and passages, showing that it was not only a masterpiece of the military architecture, with a central role in the development of the modern bastion forts, but also a masterwork of Renaissance architecture in a general sense. Realized in a period of professional misfortune for Giuliano, which was at the time sidelined from the great Roman Commissions because of competition from Bramante and engaged as a mere engineer by the authorities of the Florentine Republic, the commission to renovate the Cittadella Nuova became for him the occasion to give vent to creative needs and antiquarian interests seemingly incompatible with the military function of the building.