Fortezza Nuova

This guide to Fortezza Nuova in Pisa starts beneath the grass of its bastions, where the remains of an old gate, the Porta San Marco, still lie sealed in later stonework. It follows the night of October 8, 1406, when a hired agent unbarred that gate for Florence's soldiers, and the man sworn to protect Pisa, Giovanni Gambacorta, who was behind it. By morning fires were burning through the streets, and families who had lived here for generations were fleeing as far as Sicily and Spain. Stand where the old gate is walled in, now buried inside a much newer bastion.