Palazzo Cornazzani
Palazzo Cornazzani is a palace in Pavia, in Lombardy, where, between 1895 and 1896, Albert Einstein lived.
History
The palace belonged to the noble Cornazzani family and was built in the 15th century, incorporating the remains of previous buildings, in late Gothic style. Originally the building had belonged to the aristocratic Beccaria family and passed to the Cornazzani in the 16th century through marriage; the Cornazzani were a lineage of Parma origin who served Filippo Maria Visconti for a long time first and then the Sforza, thus obtaining Milanese citizenship, and of which a branch settled in Pavia. Prominent personalities often stayed in the house, such as the governor of Milan Antonio de Guzmán or Cardinal Michele Bonelli, who apparently stayed more than a year in the Pavia palace.Ugo Foscolo also resided there, in the company of his friend Giulio Gabrielli di Montevecchio, in the years in which he was a university professor in Pavia, which is why the building is now also called "Casa del Foscolo"; later the street where the building is located was named after the famous poet. Later the building was inhabited, at different times, by the professor Contardo Ferrini, by the poet Ada Negri and by a young Albert Einstein; the latter stayed there with his family between 1895 and 1896, a period in which his father Hermann ran a factory manufacturing electric machines in Pavia.
In the palace he wrote a short essay with the title "On the Investigation of the State of the Ether in a Magnetic Field".