Venue

Palazzo Lanfranchi is located in Lungarno Galilei 9, between Vicolo Lanfranchi and Vicolo Da Scorno. It arises from a nucleus of tower houses and buildings erected between the 12th and 14th centuries. It takes its name from the family that lived there since 1539. The Lanfranchi, a family belonging to the first Pisan consular aristocracy, obtained a building whose external appearance corresponds to the present one. Inside the building you can still see the medieval structures and decorations, among which the fourteenth-century “vaio painting”, an ornamental motif common to other illustrious Pisan palaces overlooking the Lungarni. This ornamental motif was probably commissioned by the lanaiolo Betto Stefani who was the first to give the building a unified structure.

The renovation of the building was carried out from 1976 to 1980 and commissioned to Architect Massimo Carmassi by the Municipality of Pisa, owner of the property. Through a philological restoration, it was possible to rediscover and enhance the various construction phases. The intervention on the facade, commissioned by the Lanfranchi family, is still characterized by a main portal placed not in axis with the building, a terrace with coat of arms and windows surmounted at the first two orders by triangular and semicircular tympanums, at the third by stone frames. The white material of the decorative apparatus contrasts with the red brick of the unplastered wall giving the building a distinctive connotation.

In the 19th century the building underwent a significant transformation with the demolition of the two 17th century stairs and the construction of a single three-flight stairwell with a pavilion roof, lit by a skylight.

Since 2007 Palazzo Lanfranchi hosts the Museo della Grafica.