Built towards the end of the 13th century, the Cemetery of Pisa conserves an extraordinary patrimony of works of art, including famous pictorial testimonies and a prestigious collection of ancient sculpture. Until the 19th century, it also conserved a series of funerary monuments and busts of illustrious scientists and teachers of the Pisan Studio.

Among the funerary monuments, we cite in particular those of physician and man of letters Matteo Corte, writer Francesco Algarotti who distinguished himself in the dissemination of Newtonian physics, physicians Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri and Giacomo Barzellotti, engineer Giuseppe Morosi from Ripafratta, physicist Lorenzo Pignotti, astronomer Ottaviano Fabrizio Mossotti, physicist Carlo Matteucci, chemist Giuseppe Orosi, mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (later transferred to the Scotto Garden, and today once again relocated to the Cemetery), and natural scientist Paolo Savi (moved to the Botanical Garden of Pisa).

Among the busts, we cite those of botanist Gaetano Savi, mathematician and hydraulics engineer F.A. Puccinelli from Pescia, agronomist Pietro Cuppari, geologist Giuseppe Meneghini (moved to the premises of the Museum of Natural History of Calci).

The Cemetery is also tied to the name of Galileo Galilei. The Aulla Chapel conserves the votive lamp that was suspended in the Cathedral of Pisa in Galileo’s times when he perhaps conducted the observations on the isochronism of the pendulum, recounted by his follower Vincenzo Viviani in the Racconto Istorico della vita di Galileo (1654). The votive lamp today conserved in the Cemetery of Pisa is similar in style to the one depicted by Luigi Sabatelli in the fresco of the Tribune of Galileo, which portrays the Pisan scientist intent on observing the oscillations of a lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa.