Sarzana

For the Asian-American street gang in the Los Angeles area, see Sarzana (Gang)(SZA).

Sarzana is a town and comune in the Province of La Spezia, of Liguria, Italy, 15 km east of Spezia, on the railway to Pisa, at the point where the railway to Parma diverges to the north. In 2004 it had a population of 20,180.

The fortress of Sarzana.

Sarzana has one of the most important glass-bottle factories in Italy. There are also brick-works and a fuel factory.

Contents

1 History
2 Main sights
3 Twin cities
4 References

History

The position of Sarzana at the entrance to the valley of the Magra (ancient Macra), the boundary between Etruria and Liguria in Roman times, gave it military importance in the Middle Ages. The first mention of the city is found in 983 in a diplom of Otto I: in 1202 the episcopal see was transferred from the ancient Luni, 5 km southeast, to Sarzana.

A branch of the Cadolingi di Borgonuovo family, lords of Fucecchio in Tuscany from the 10th century onwards, which had acquired the name of Bonaparte, had settled near Sarzana before 1264. In 1512 a member of the family took up his residence in Ajaccio, and hence, according to some authorities, was descended the emperor Napoleon I. Sarzana, owing to its position on the frontier, changed masters more than once, belonging first to Pisa, then to Florence, then to the Banco di S. Giorgio of Genoa and from 1572 to Genoa itself.

In 1814 it was assigned to the Kingdom of Sardinia, the frontier between Liguria and Tuscany being now made to run between it and Carrara.

Sarzana was the birthplace of Pope Nicholas V.

Main sights

The noteworthy cathedral of white marble in the Gothic style, dating from 1355, was completed in 1474. It contains two elaborately-sculptured altars of the latter period.
The former citadel, built by the Pisans, was demolished and reerected by Lorenzo de Medici.
The Castle of Sarzanello was built by the condottiero Castruccio Castracani, whose tomb by the Pisan Giovanni di Balducci is in S. Francesco.
The Palazzo del Capitano was designed by Giuliano da Maiano (1472), but is now entirely altered.

Twin cities

- Villefranche de Rouergue, France
- Eger, Hungary

References

Liguria · Communes of the province of La Spezia

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.