Camposanto Monumentale
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The Camposanto monumentale ("monumental cemetery") lies at the northern edge of the Square of Miracles in Pisa, Italy.
Its name means literally "holy field", because it is said to have been built around a shipload of sacred soil from Golgotha, brought back to Pisa from the Fourth Crusade by Ubaldo de' Lanfranchi, archbishop of Pisa in the 12th century. A legend want that people buried in that ground will be rot in just 24 hours. The burial ground was over the ruins of the old baptistery of the church of Santa Reparata, the church that was in the place of the cathedral in earlier times. The term "monumental" comes to differentiate it from the late urban cemetery in Pisa. It is also called camposanto vecchio ("old cemetery").
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[edit] History
It is a walled cemetery, which many claim is the most beautiful cemetery in the world. The building itself is the fourth and last one to be raised in the square. It dates from a century later the soil from Golgotha, and was erected over the earlier burial ground. The building of this huge, oblong Gothic cloister began in 1278 by the architect Giovanni di Simone. He died in 1284 when Pisa suffered a defeat in a naval battle of Meloria against the Genoans. The cemetery was only completed in 1464. It seems that the building was not meant to be a real cemetery, but a church called Santissima Trinità, but project changed during the construction. However we know that the original part was the western one (and this should be, at least for a while, the mentioned church), and all the eastern part was the last to be made and closing the structure.
[edit] Building
The outer wall is composed of 43 blind arches. There are two doorways. The one on the right is crowned by a gracious Gothic tabernacle. It contains the Virgin Mary with Child, surrounded by four saints. It is the work from the second half of the 14th century by a follower of Giovanni Pisano. This was the original entrance door. Most of the tombs are under the arcades, although a few are on the central lawn. The inner court is surrounded by elaborate round arches with slender mullions and plurilobed tracery.
The cemetery has three chapels. The oldest ones are the chapel Ammannati (1360) and takes its name from the tomb of Ligo Ammannati, a teacher in the University of Pisa; and the chapel Aulla, were there is an altar made by Giovanni della Robbia in 1518. In this chapel we can see also the original lamp that Galileo Galilei saw, in his time, inside the cathedral and that was shortly replaced by the bigger one we can see now. The last chapel was Dal Pozzo, wanted by archbishop of Pisa Carlo Antonio Dal Pozzo in 1594; it has an altar dedicated to St. Girolamo and a little dome.
[edit] Sarcophagi
The Camposanto contained a huge collection of Roman sarcophagi, but now there are only 84 left and a collection of Roman and Etruscan sculptures and urns, now in the Museum of the vestry board. The sarcophagi were initially all around the cathedral, often attached to the building itself. That until the cemetery was built, then they were collected in the middle all over the meadow. Carlo Lasinio, in the years he was the curator of the Camposanto, collected many other ancient relics that were spread in Pisa to made a sort of an archeological museum inside the cemetery. Nowadays the sarcophagi are inside the galleries, near the walls.
[edit] Frescoes
The walls were once covered in frescoes, the first were applied in 1360, the last about three centuries later. The first was the Crucifixion by Francesco Traini, in the south western side. Then, continuing to right, in the southern side, the realistics Last judgement, The hell, The Triumph of Death and the Anacoreti nella Tebaide, the work of Buonamico Buffalmacco. The cycle of frescoes continues with the Stories of the Old Testament by Benozzo Gozzoli (15th century) that were situated in the north gallery, while in the south arcade were the Stories of Pisan Saints, by Andrea Bonaiuti, Antonio Veneziano and Spinello Aretino (between 1377 and 1391), and the Stories of Job, by Taddeo Gaddi (end of 14th century). In the same time, in the north gallery were the Stories of the Genesis by Piero di Puccio. Onn 27 July 1944, incidentally from an Allied, a bomb fragment started a fire. Due to all the water tanks be controlled, the fire cannot be put out in time, so it attached the wooden rafters and melted the lead coverage of the roof. The destruction of the roof severely damaged everything inside the cemetery, destroying most of the sculptures and sarcophagi and compromising all the frescoes. After the war restoration works begun, the roof was rebuild as near as possible to what it should be, and the frescoes were separated from the walls to be restored a part. Once they removed the frescoes, the preliminary drawings, called sinopie. Those underdrawings were separated with the same technique of the frescoes and now they are in the Museum of the sinopie, in the opposite side of the Square. Nowadays, the restored frescoes that still exist are placed little by little where they originally are meant, inside the cemetery, to bring back the interior of the building like it was before the war.
 The cemetery before the World War |
 Camposanto interior gallery |
 Statue of Leonardo Fibonacci |
 Chains of the medieval harbor of Pisa |
 Giovanni della Robbia, altar in the chapel Aulla |
 Detail of a tomb |
 Roman sarcophagus |
 Roman sarcophagus |
 XIX century tomb |
 Buonamico Buffalmacco, Triumph of Death |
 Buonamico Buffalmacco, The Hell |
 Taddeo Gaddi, Stories of Job |
