Thirteen institutes, one thousand one hundred researchers, technicians and administrators, 10 patents and over 1,000 scientific papers published internationally in the past year alone. This is the Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa in numbers: a city within a city, a new “piazza dei Miracoli” that has made frontier technologies the smallest common denominator of its research activities. It was here that made in Italy Internet was born and is developed; here that computer technologies breathe new life into the country’s most valuable cultural heritage; here that physics, engineering, mathematics and biology support medical and geological research in a model that is unparalleled in Italy. Areas of expertise for which it has gained national and international recognition; areas of expertise that live and feed off the land; areas of expertise that have made the city a leader in technology, a leader that knows a great deal about Helsinki and not an awful lot about the calm sweeping hills of Tuscany.