Showing posts with label Pavia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pavia. Show all posts

Sunday, 22 April 2012

... notte "PAVESE"

Pavia, the ancient roman “castrum Ticinum”, is a town located 35 km south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with Po. Under the domination of the Visconti family Pavia became an intellectual and artistic centre, being the seat from 1361 of the University of Pavia founded around the nucleus of the old school of law, which attracted students from all over Europe.









Albert Einstein in Pavia
Looking for new working opportunities, Albert Einstein’s father moved in 1894 to Italy opening at first a small electrical manufacturing workshop close to Milan and then, a few months later, in the near town of Pavia. 
In the meantime that the family was in Pavia, Albert remained in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school's regimen and teaching method. 
He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict "rote learning". 
At the end of December 1895, just a little more than sixteen, he travelled to Italy to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note. 
To his stay in Pavia is dedicated the engraved plate here below, today affixed midway of the Ponte Coperto (the Covered Bridge) on Ticino river just a few hundred meters from the city center. 
"An die schöne Brücke in Pavia habe ich oft gedacht"
(I’ve often thought to the beautiful bridge of Pavia, Albert Einstein-1947, from a letter to his friend Ernestina Marangoni).