Galileo: From Pisa to Arcetri

Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564. In 1581, enrolled for a medical degree, he noticed a swinging chandelier whose arcs grew larger and smaller as air currents moved it, yet, timed against his heartbeat, it seemed to take the same time for each swing. A legend places the moment in the cathedral, under the nave lamp still called Galileo's lamp; the original lamp, smaller and very different, is today in the Camposanto.

Location precision: The cathedral lamp is only a legend; the sources say it is a later one and the original is elsewhere.

In 1589 Galileo was appointed to the chair of mathematics in Pisa. Between 1589 and 1592 he is said to have dropped two cannonballs of different masses from the tower to show that they fall at the same speed. The primary source is a biography by his pupil Vincenzo Viviani, written in 1654 but published only in 1717, so the experiment remains a story rather than a proven event.

Location precision: The tower drop is only said to have happened, so the pin marks the tower only as the traditional site.

In 1592 Galileo moved to the University of Padua, where he taught geometry, mechanics and astronomy until 1610. Padua was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe, and he held its chair of mathematics throughout. These were the years of his major discoveries in both pure and applied science. The pin marks the university's historic Palazzo Bo, but the sources used here do not say where he lectured.

Location precision: The pin marks the University of Padua's historic seat; the sources do not name Galileo's lecture hall.

After being called to Rome, Galileo was tried over his defence of the Copernican theory. The sentence was read on 22 June 1633 in a room of the Minerva convent, which housed the tribunal's secret meetings. He was found "vehemently suspect of heresy" and abjured the Copernican theory. The next day the prison sentence was commuted to house arrest.

From early 1634 Galileo served his sentence at Il Gioiello in Arcetri, beside the convent where his daughter Maria Celeste was a nun. She died that year; 124 of her letters to him survive. Blind from 1638, he still wrote on, finishing the Discourses on Two New Sciences. Visitors included the English poet John Milton.

Galileo died on 8 January 1642. He is buried in the Basilica of Santa Croce, the Florence church that also holds Michelangelo and Machiavelli, and his daughter Maria Celeste, who died in April 1634, is buried with him. The Grand Duke wanted a marble mausoleum in the main church, but the plan was dropped after the Pope protested, and Galileo was first buried in a small room off a corridor near the sacristy. He was moved into the main body of the basilica in 1737, once a monument to him had been raised there.

Visitor guidance: The basilica stands on the Piazza di Santa Croce in Florence.