The Opera della Primarziale Pisana is pleased to present the new temporary exhibition "Behind the symbols: flags from Islam and stories from the sea in the Medici Tuscany", scheduled from 20 June to 21 September 2025 at the Museo delle Sinopie in Piazza dei Miracoli.
The exhibition is realized by the Opera della Primaziale Pisana with the sponsorship of the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa and with the support and contribution of Fondazione Pisa, Rotary Pisa, Rotary Pisa Galilei and curated by a scientific committee composed by Andrea Addobbati, Gianfranco Adornato, Stefano Bruni and Giuseppe Petralia.
The exhibition collects rare Islamic banners of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries collected in battle by the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen to Barbary and Turkish ships, and since then kept in the church of Saint Stephen of the Knights (in the homonymous square of the Knights in Pisa), currently closed for restoration. It is the first time that these draperies and memorabilia are exhibited to the public accompanied by a scientific and narrative apparatus capable of making them readable to a wide audience. The exhibits include Turkish banners, oriental weapons, Arabic manuscripts and illustrative materials such as prints, drawings and original documents. To enrich the path, some explanatory panels tell the modern Mediterranean as a fluid space of relations between powers, religions and cultures, highlighting how even these military symbols are actually fragments of a much wider and stratified network of relationships than Pisa, Since the Middle Ages, he entertained with the Arab-Islamic world.
The thread of these connections extends, in fact, beyond the rooms of the Museum of Sinopie and is intertwined with the city itself that over the centuries has been able to welcome and rework influences from the Islamic world. Starting from the Middle Ages, Pisa was the scene of intense and continuous cultural exchanges: tangible traces remain in architecture and art. Just to give some examples, it is enough to think of the polychrome inlays, the famous black and white bands, the acute arches or the ellipsoidal dome of the Cathedral, to the motifs of the floor of the presbytery in the Baptistery or to the bronze Grifo of Islamic manufacture now preserved in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo. And again, in the monumental Camposanto, the statue of Leonardo Fibonacci - the great mathematician from Pisa who studied in Algeria and introduced Arabic numerals to Europe - is an ideal reminder of that continuous dialogue between Eastern and Western knowledge. Even on the facades of some city churches not far from the Piazza dei Miracoli, such as San Sisto and Santa Cecilia, you can still see enamelled ceramic basins of Islamic taste, sign of a decorative tradition that from object of import became, with the arrival of migrant craftsmen, a local production appreciated throughout Europe.
For residents of the province of Pisa and students enrolled at the University of Pisa, it is possible to take advantage of a free admission with guided tour in the days:
- 27 June 2025
- 4 July 2025
- 11 July 2025
- 18 July 2025
from 8 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. For info and reservations www.impegnoefuturo.it.
