della Gherardesca

The della Gherardesca were a noble family of the Republic of Pisa, of Lombard origin, whose lineage is documented from the eleventh century. Leaders of the Ghibelline party, they held the county of Donoratico and rivalled the Guelph Visconti.

After the partition of Cagliari in 1258 the family took the mining-rich south-west of Sardinia, where Count Ugolino founded Villa di Chiesa around 1272. Ugolino withdrew his squadron at the naval battle of Meloria against Genoa in 1284, a flight later read as treachery.

Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini seized Ugolino in 1288 and had him starved to death with two sons and two grandsons in the Muda tower in 1289, an episode Dante made famous in the Inferno. The house never recovered its hold on Pisa, but branches endured as landholders in Volterra and Florence.