The Napoleonic period

The Napoleonic period
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This is how the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa was born, by Napoleon's will. The term "Normal" refers to its primary teaching mission, to train middle school teachers who educate citizens according to coherent teaching and methodological "norms".

On February 22, 1811, the first competition announcement was issued, but the Pisan Normal began its activity only in 1813, when the first students of Literature and Science settled at the School.



The Normal was reserved for the best students - aged between seventeen and twenty-four - selected at the end of high school courses, which during the two years of studies also achieved degrees in the faculties of Literature and Sciences of the imperial university. The students had particular commitments and were obliged to take additional courses: they were followed by four "repeaters", chosen by the director among the students of the Normale, who repeated the university lessons daily and coordinated conferences, that is a sort of seminars. By virtue of this training, young people undertook to teach, after graduation, in secondary schools for at least ten years [6].

The Napoleonic Normal School had a short life: only the academic 1813-1814, during which the physicist Ranieri Gerbi was director. On 6 April 1814 Napoleon signed the act of abdication: the return of the Grand Duke Ferdinand III on the throne of Tuscany coincides with the closure of the School, despite various attempts to save it in the name of its function.
The grand-ducal period
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The closure of the school after the Napoleonic phase was rather short. The grand-ducal decree of December 22, 1817, re-established the ancient order of the Knights of St. Stephen in Pisa; in 1843, the council of the Order proposed to set up a boarding school for "young nobles" with the attached Scuola Normale at the Palazzo della Carovana.

To assess the feasibility of the new project, Grand Duke Leopold II of Lorraine appointed a commission, which again gave the School the function of training secondary school teachers. On 28 November 1846, a grand-ducal Motuproprio established the Scuola Normale Toscana, also called Imperial Regia Scuola Normale, as it was related to the Austrian system. On November 15, 1847, the new headquarters in the Carovana building were inaugurated.

The new school was defined as "theoretical and practical", intended to "train teachers and teachers of secondary schools" [7]; a boarding school that made available paid places in addition to ten free places, with advantages reserved for the Knights of the Order, which were accessed through a competition, once completed eighteen years.