Attractions

The Leaning Tower & Other Pisan Miracles

On a grassy lawn wedged into the northwest corner of the city walls, medieval Pisans created one of the most beautiful squares in the world. Historically dubbed the Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles), Piazza del Duomo contains an array of elegant buildings that heralded the Pisan Romanesque style.

But Piazza del Duomo isn't the central plaza in town as in most Tuscan cities. When it was built between the 11th and 13th centuries, the square was against the city walls, surrounded by farmland. But this peripheral location also somehow plays a role in the piazza's uniqueness. A very large but hidden part of its appeal, aside from the beauty of the buildings, is its spatial geometry. The piazza's medieval engineers knew what they were doing. If you take an aerial photo of the square and draw connect-the-dot lines between the centers, doors, and other focal points of the buildings and the spots where streets enter the piazza, you'll come up with all sorts of perfect triangles, tangential lines of mathematical grace, and other unfathomable hypotenuses.

Incidentally, only the tourist industry calls it Campo dei Miracoli. Pisans think that's just a bit too much and refer to it, as they always have, as Piazza del Duomo. I recommend visiting the Camposanto after the two museums, since both contain exhibits that'll help you appreciate the loss of the Camposanto frescoes.

Campo dei Miracoli Admissions -- Admission charges for the group of monuments and museums on the campo are tied together in a needlessly complicated way. The Cattedrale alone costs 2€ ($2.60). Any other single sight is 5€ ($6.50). Any two sights are 6€ ($7.80). The Cattedrale plus any two other sights is 8€ ($10). An 8.50€ ($11) ticket gets you into the Baptistery, Camposanto, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, and Museo delle Sinopie, while a 10€ ($13) version throws in the Cattedrale as well. Children under 10 enter free. For more information, visit their collective website at www.opapisa.it. Admission to the Leaning Tower (15€/$20) is by advance reservation only.

Pisa's Perpendicularly Challenged Tower

Most medieval towers still standing in Italy haven't been able to keep perpendicular over the centuries. But it's the Leaning Tower of Pisa that has become international shorthand for Italy itself.

The tower's problem -- that which has been the bane of Pisan engineers trying to overcome it for more than 800 years -- is that you can't stack that much heavy marble on top of a shifting subsoil foundation and keep it all on the up and up. It was started in 1173 -- the date on the wall of 1174 owes to an old Pisan quirk of starting the year with the date of the Virgin's conception -- by Guglielmo and Bonnano Pisano (who also sculpted the Duomo's original bronze doors). They got as far as the third level in 1185 when they noticed the lean, at that point only about 3.8 centimeters (1 1/2 in.), but enough to worry them. Everyone was at a loss as to what to do, so work stopped for almost a century and wasn't resumed again until 1275 under the direction of Giovanni di Simone. He tried to correct the tilt by intentionally curving the structure back toward the perpendicular, giving the tower its slight banana shape. In 1284, work stopped yet again just before the belfry. In 1360, Tomasso di Andrea da Pontedera capped it all off at about 51m (167 ft.) with a slightly Gothic belfry that tilts jauntily to the side.

The only major blip in the tower's long career as a world-famous, bizarre Italian attraction came in 1590, when a hometown scientist named Galileo Galilei dropped some mismatched wooden balls off the leaning side to prove to an incredulous world his theory that gravity exerted the same force on two falling objects no matter what their relative weights. In the early 19th century, someone got it into his head to dig out around the base of the tower in order to see how the foundations were laid and perhaps find a way to correct the slipping lean, but all he accomplished was to remove what little stability the tower had acquired over the centuries, and it started falling faster than ever before (not that it was all that fast: about 1mm/.04 in. a year).

For several decades, a series of complicated and delicate projects have been directed at stabilizing the alluvial subsoil. In 1989, more than a million people climbed the tower, but by 1990 the lean was at about 4.6m (15 ft.) out of plumb and, by order of a mayor's office concerned for safety, the tower was closed to the public. At 3:25pm on January 7, 1990, with the tower's bells sounding a death knell, the doors were closed indefinitely. In 1992, steel cables were belted around the base to prevent shear forces from ripping apart the masonry. In 1993, even the bells and their dangerous vibrations were silenced, and the same year a series of lead weights was rather unaesthetically stacked on the high side to try to correct the list. In 1997, engineers took a chance on excavating around the base again -- this time carefully removing more than 70 tons of soil from the foundation of the high side so the tower could gradually tip back.

In December 2001, righted to its more stable lean of 1838 (when it was a mere 4m/13 ft. off its center), the tower reopened to the public. Now, however, the number of visitors is strictly controlled via compulsory 35- to 40-minute guided tours -- and a massive admission charge. Visit www.opapisa.it/boxoffice to book tickets. It's wise to book well ahead; if you show up in Pisa without reservations in the height of the tourist season, you will not be able to get into the tower.

The campanile, by the way, isn't the only edifice out of whack on the piazza. The same water-saturated and unsteady sandy soil under the Field of Miracles that causes the bell tower's poor posture has taken its toll on the other buildings as well. The baptistery leans toward the north, and if you catch the Duomo's facade at the correct angle, you'll see it, too, is a few feet shy of straight. The nature of Pisa's alluvial plain has caused many of its older buildings to shift and settle in this manner, and a couple of other campanile about town have been nicknamed Pisa's "other leaning towers" (San Michele degli Scalzi is, if anything, even more weirdly askew than its more famous cousin). Admission to Piazza del Duomo (tel. 050-560-547; www.opapisa.it/boxoffice) is 17€ (15€ ticket plus 2€ advance sales fee/$22). Children under 8 not permitted. Show printed proof of receipt at the ticket offices of Opera della Primaziale Pisa 1 hour prior to scheduled visit. Open Monday to Friday 8am to 1:30pm. Take bus no. 1, 3, or 11.

Pisa's Sunken Treasure: Back in Hiding

The old Medici Arsenale, Lungarno Simonelli, houses the finds of the remarkable ongoing excavation of the 10 ancient Roman wooden ships -- spanning the 1st century B.C. to the Imperial Age, from riverboats to seafaring vessels -- stumbled upon by workers expanding the San Rossore train station in 1998. After just 2 years open to the public, however, the museum closed its doors for restoration in January 2004 and won't open them again until at least 2009. This is truly disappointing, since it is one of the most interesting exhibits in Tuscany, and certainly more appealing to return visitors to Pisa than another jaunt up the tower.

Buried by silt in the 12th century (which has since moved the shoreline 8km/5 miles west), these docks where the Arno met the sea were probably half marshy flatlands, half lagoon -- much like modern-day Venice. Alas, this sort of harbor is prone to flash flooding during storms, a recurrent event that probably sank these ships at various times over the centuries.

Fortunately for us, their sudden demise also meant that much of their contents have survived, from holds filled with clay amphorae (whose seals have preserved shipments of olives, cherries, walnuts, and wine for 2,000 years) to sailor's quarters still containing their belongings: leather sandals, sewing kits, even a wax writing board. In the half-decade since the discovery, maritime archaeologists had uncovered two more vessels, including what may be the only Roman warship ever recovered intact. When the museum reopens, as Museo Navi Antiche di Pisa (tel. 050-21-441 or 055-321-5446; www.navipisa.it), it will display the ships' contents (including a sailor's skeleton) and will let you watch the arduous restoration of the vessels.

Other Attractions in Pisa

If you go down Via Santa Maria from Piazza del Duomo and take a left on Via dei Mille, you'll come out into Piazza Cavalieri, possibly the site of the Roman town's forum and later the square where the citizens of the medieval city-state met to discuss political issues. Giorgio Vasari remodeled the Palazzo dei Cavalieri in 1562 and decorated it with recently restored and very detailed graffiti; it now houses the renowned university college Scuola Normale Superiore. Next to the palace is the baroque San Stefano, housing some tempera paintings by the likes of Empoli, Cristofano Allori, and Vasari (Mon-Fri 9am-12:30pm, Sat-Sun 9am-12:30pm and 3-6pm). Also on the piazza is the stubby clock tower of the Palazzo dell'Orologio, where Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, suspected of having betrayed his fellow Pisans in the fateful battle where Genoa decisively crushed Pisan naval might, was locked up to starve to death along with his sons and grandsons. The tragic story was immortalized by Dante in his Inferno and Shelley in his Tower of Famine.

If you continue down Via Santa Maria toward the Arno, you'll come to the millennial church of San Nicola (tel. 050-24-677), with a Francesco Traini Madonna and Child on the first altar on the right and a 1400 St. Nicholas of Tolentino Protecting Pisa from the Plague. To the left of the high altar is Giovanni Pisano's gaunt Jesus being crucified. The church is also home to the second of Pisa's leaning towers, a 13th-century campanile whose spiral staircase inspired Renaissance architect Bramante for the stairs he installed in the Vatican. (Though the church is officially open daily 9am-noon and 5-8pm, you often need to seek out the sacristan to get in; ring the bell at the door next to the tower.)

To the northeast of Piazza Cavalieri lies Santa Caterina (tel. 050-552-883), with a Gothic facade from 1330 and the tomb of Archbishop Simone Saltarelli by Nino Pisano along with Francesco Triani's Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas. It's open daily from 8am to 1pm. Southeast of this, near the city walls, San Francesco (tel. 050-544-091) contains some good baroque works by Empoli, Il Passignano, and Santi di Tito. The vault has 1342 frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi, and in the second chapel to the right of the high altar is a Crucifixion with Saints by Spinello Aretino. It's open daily from 7:30am to noon and 4 to 7:30pm.

Walk west along Via San Francesco to Borgo Stretto, Pisa's arcaded shopping street. Off Borgo Stretto near Piazza Garibaldi is hidden the arched Piazza Vettovaglie, which houses an old-fashioned food market.

A ways up the Arno near Ponte Fortezza is Pisa's only significant painting collection, the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Lungarno Mediceo (tel. 050-541-865). To see the collection in chronological order, head immediately out into the pretty brick cloister and cross to ascend the central staircase on the opposite side. (If you mistake doors, you'll be in for a whole lot of medieval and Renaissance painted plates.) Poorly lit and sporadically labeled, the collections are constantly being rearranged, but you should be able to find the masterpieces amid the shuffle. The first large room of paintings has many good 14th- and 15th-century works by Turino Vanni, Taddeo di Bartolo, and Spinello Aretino, plus a pair of Agnolo Gaddi polyptychs. One of the prides of the collections is the Sienese master Simone Martini's polyptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints. In a side room they keep the originals of the Giovanni and Nino Pisano sculptures from Santa Maria della Spina, including Nino's masterpiece, Madonna del Latte, a very human mother in Gothic curving grace who smiles down at her nursing baby.

Other star works are a St. Paul by Masaccio, the greenishly aged Madonna dell'Umilità by Gentile da Fabriano, and a Madonna col Bambino by Fra' Angelico. The Donatello gilded bronze reliquary Bust of St. Rossone (1427) is an important sculptural step from medieval to Renaissance style and is held by some to be a self-portrait. Take bus no. 5, 7, or 13 to get to the museum; it's open Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 7pm and Sunday from 9am to 2pm; admission is 4€ ($5.20).

If you follow the north side of the Arno upstream about a mile past San Matteo (or take bus no. 14), you'll come to Pisa's third and perhaps most skewed "leaning tower." It almost looks as if the Pisans simply gave up on rulers and right angles when building San Michele degli Scalzi. Nothing stands straight up: not the outer walls, the tiers of columns dividing the nave from the aisles, the apse, the windows, or, of course, the bell tower. Take bus no. 13 (from Via San Michele degli Scalzi) back to the center.

The south bank of the Arno holds little of interest except for the Gothic gem Santa Maria della Spina (tel. 050-21-441), which sits along the river. The church is a collaborative Giovanni and Nino Pisano work of 1230 to 1323, dismantled and raised to current ground level (for fear of floods) in 1871. It was built to house a spina (thorn) from Christ's Passion crown brought back by a merchant from the Crusades. Much of the Pisano sculpture from the outside has been removed for safekeeping to the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, as has the church's primary attraction, Nino Pisano's Madonna del Latte. However, for the first time since it closed 35 years ago, you can finally peek inside. Open Tuesday through Friday: October through March from 10am to 2pm (and 10am-1pm and 2:30-5pm on the second Sun of those months); April, May, and September from 10am to 1:30pm and 2:30 to 6pm (7pm weekends); June through August from 11am to 1:30pm and 2:30 to 6pm (8pm weekends). Admission is 1.10€ ($1.45) adults, free for children under 10 and seniors over 65.