Tracing Byron and Shelley’s footsteps in Pisa

The Story in Brief

Frontline reports on a recent visit to Pisa, Italy, tracing the haunts of poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The author visits Palazzo Lanfranchi on the River Arno, where Byron lived in 1821 with menagerie and literary friends including the Shelleys. It now houses state archives. She also sought Villa Dupuy near Livorno, now a shuttered private property. Shelley died in 1822 when his boat capsized off La Spezia. Byron died two years later in Greece. The author recalls studying Byron in Kolkata and later living near his English ancestral estate.