Gherardesca were a family of Tuscan origin which played an important part in the history of the Italian republics of the middle ages. Historically the most prominent member of the family is Ugolino, whose death, and that of his two sons and grandsons, by starvation in the 'Tower of Hunger,' is described in one of the celebrated passages of Dante's Divina Commedia. Ugolino had made himself master of Pisa, and had behaved in the most cruel and arbitrary manner for four years, when, in 1288, he was overthrown by a conspiracy. Research Gherardesca
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Abbreviations
Research Gherardesca
