Pisa’s monumental cemetery, where the city’s aristocracy was buried until the 18th century, was begun in 1278, when Crusaders began shipping back shiploads of dirt from Golgotha (the mount where Christ was crucified). Giovanni di Simone (architect of the Leaning Tower) enclosed the field in a marble cloister, and the walls were eventually covered by magnificent 14th- and 15th-century frescoes, mostly destroyed by Allied bombings in World War II; one of the few remaining, a “Triumph of Death,” inspired the 19th-century composer Franz Liszt to write his “Totentanz” (“Dance of Death”). Roman sarcophagi, used as funerary monuments, fared better, and 84 survive. So do the huge chains that medieval Pisans used to protect their harbor and now hang on the cemetery walls.