“I hope that from this convention we will finally move from the politics of announcements to the politics of doing.” The president of the Pisa Foundation, Stefano Del Corso, chooses the blue room of the Normale to send a clear and strong message to the State to address, once and for all, the problem of the restoration of the church of the knights and finally make it open to the public. “The Foundation, which from 1999 to today has already provided contributions for interventions in the square that exceed 2 million euros – he added – will do its part to the full also for Boxing Day by making available a contribution to be quantified but certainly significant. However, we cannot intervene by military means, but it is up to the public bodies responsible to present projects for the future”.
Del Corso, however, does not hold back: “We will continue to do what we have always done because it is part of our mission. Just as we willingly supported the project to enhance Piazza dei Cavalieri, which we immediately felt was extreme interest, in the perspective of rediscovering the importance of a central place in Pisa, from an urban planning point of view and for the history of the city: the hope is that, thanks also to its digital characterization, it can allow us to shed new light on a of the most beautiful squares in the city, but also that the website dedicated to it allows for greater knowledge of it to the point of being able to increasingly include the square in tourist routes”. The Piazza dei Cavalieri Project demonstrates how collaboration between institutions can activate quality cultural policies, capable of returning to the community an important heritage that was previously difficult to access, opening up new perspectives for reading and understanding a place so rich in history and meaning. “With this initiative that we have enthusiastically embraced – observes Del Corso – the Normale reaffirms its centuries-old vocation not only to scientific investigation, but also to the cultural valorization and conservation of the artistic-architectural heritage, renewing its image of itself as a place of research for a few with an open space for the involvement of an increasingly wider audience”.
Finally, Del Corso lists the main interventions carried out in the last 25 years in Piazza dei Cavalieri: in 1999 the Foundation’s disbursement “financed the expenditure necessary for the construction of 31 display windows in which to relocate the Turkish flags, the following year we paid for the restoration of the stone vestments and the painting of the facades of the Palazzo dei Dodici, completing the intervention in 2009 with the renewal of the furnishings of the small museum of historical relics of the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen which is located inside the building “. In 2002, concludes Del Corso, “the Foundation became interested for the first time in the church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri, financing with a substantial contribution the restoration of the facades (main, apse and lateral) and the bell tower, in addition to the installation of the anti-bird system, while in 2013 we paid for the renovation of the roof and during the final inspection phase, in 2015, it emerged that the right nave of the church was unusable due to damage to the wooden structure of the roof: added to all this contributions for a series of restorations to the Normale and for the recovery of other historic buildings in the square”.
Gab. Mas.
