Exhibition “Byron. The Restlessness of Freedom” at Palazzo Toscanelli | Pisa

From 25 September to 18 October, the State Archives of Pisa is hosting two exhibitions: one documentary and the other photographic, entitled “Byron. The Restlessness of Freedom”. The exhibitions are on display in the Stucco Hall of Palazzo Toscanelli, a place steeped in the memory of Byron, who made the city one of the cradles of European Romantic culture.

The two exhibitions tell the story of Byron: the documentary exhibition does so through archival documents that retrace Byron’s presence and that of the Anglo-Pisan circle, linking historical accounts with the places where those events took place.
The documentary exhibition is complemented by a contemporary perspective in the photographic exhibition Byron Contemporaneo by Giampiero Corelli, curated by Daniela Ferrari.

Lord Byron arrived in Pisa in the autumn of 1821 and took up residence in the Lanfranchi palace on the Lungarno, now known as Palazzo Toscanelli. The poet’s presence helped to make the city one of the most significant locations in the Italian experience of the English Romantics. Pisa became a meeting place for an extraordinary cosmopolitan community of poets, writers, intellectuals and exiles. Between 1820 and 1822, figures such as Leigh Hunt, Edward John Trelawny, Thomas Medwin, Teresa Guiccioli and Pietro Gamba gathered around Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and George Gordon Byron, alongside other Italian and international figures, in a group that has gone down in history as the Pisan Circle.

See program below