Giardino Scotto

This guide to Giardino Scotto in Pisa starts underground in time, with the potters of the Baractularia quarter who worked this riverbank centuries before anyone fought over it, and the bronze foundries that later cast the bells of Pisan towers. It follows how Florence's conquest in the fourteen forties cleared those workshops for a squat citadel, reinforced against cannon fire by military architect Antonio da Sangallo and rebuilt harder after a Pisan revolt in fourteen ninety-five. Along the garden paths, local legend ties one plane tree to the playwright Carlo Goldoni, a story that does not quite hold up to the dates.