SARZANA  , a

town and episcopal see of Liguria, Italy, in. the province of Genoa, 9 m . E. of Spezia, on the railway to Pisa, at the point where the railway to Parma diverges to the north, 59 ft. above sea-level . Pop . (Igor) 6531 (town); 11,850 (commune) . The handsome cathedral of white marble in the Gothic style, dating from 1355, was completed in 1474 . It contains two elaborately-sculptured altars of the latter period . The former citadel (now gaol), built by the Pisans, was demolished and re-erected by Lorenzo de' Medici . The castle of Sarzanello was built by Castruccio Castracani (d . 1328), whose tomb by the Pisan Giovanni di Balducci is in S . Francesco . The Palazzo del Capitano, by Giuliano da Maiano (1472), has been entirely altered . Sarzana has one of the most important glass-bottle factories in Italy, also brick-works and a patent fuel factory .

Sarzana was the birthplace of

Pope Nicholas V . Its position at the entrance to the valley of the Magra (anc . Macra), the boundary between Etruria and Liguria in Roman times, gave it military importance in the middle ages . It arose as the successor of the ancient Luna, 3 M . S.E.; the first mention of it is found in 983, and in 1202 the episcopal see was transferred hither . A branch of the Cadolingi di Borgonuovo family, lords of Fucecchio in Tuscany from the loth century onwards, which had acquired the name of Bonaparte, had settled near Sarzana before 1264; in 1512 a member of the family took up his residence in Ajaccio, and hence, according to some authorities, was descended the emperor Napoleon I . Sarzana, owing to its position on the frontier, changed masters more than once, belonging first to Pisa, then to Florence, then to the Banco di S . Giorgio of Genoa and from 1572 to Genoa itself . In 1814 it was assigned to the kingdom of Sardinia, the frontier between Liguria and Tuscany being now made to run between it and Carrara .