Pisa | Villa Medici in the Estate of Coltano

The Tenuta (estate) di Coltano occupies over 3,000 hectares within the Regional Park of San Rossore Migliarino Massaciuccoli, which originally constituted a vast marshland that extended almost as far as Pisa.

Cosimo I

The Grand Duke Cosimo I began the construction of the Medici Villa, according to the project of Buontalenti, starting important hydraulic interventions to solve the swamping of the land that were then continued by Lorraine. The villa hosts the environmental education center that organizes excursions in the estate. Visits are currently suspended for renovation works.

The most powerful maritime radio station in Europe

At the beginning of the 20th century the most powerful maritime radio station in Europe was here. Telephone communications passed with the transatlantic liners traveling in the Oceans and up to the China Sea. From here passed in 1911 the signal from a pulse pressed by Guglielmo Marconi in Rome, which turned on the lights of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. The plant was destroyed during the Second World War by the retreating Nazi troops. Today it is unfortunately in a state of abandonment.

At Coltano the Allied Forces established in May 1945 the prison camp, where they were incarcerated soldiers and Nazi collaborators and about 35,000 soldiers of the Social Republic. Some of the prisoners would become well-known faces in the world of culture and entertainment: Dario Fo (Nobel Prize for Literature), the actors Walter Chiari, Raimondo Vianello and Carlo Maria Salerno, the marcher Giuseppe Dordoni (gold at the Helsinki Olympics), the sports journalist Enrico Ameri.

In the prison camp of Metato, between Pisa and Viareggio, was imprisoned the American poet Ezra Pound who wrote the “Canti Pisani”.