Pisa

On Friday (May 2) we drove from Lucca to Pisa. It was just a super-easy (toll) freeway drive and then a bit of slow traffic once we arrived in Pisa, for a total of about 20 minutes.

The parking situation in Pisa is far better than I would have dreamed - there is a large, free(!) parking lot just outside the north wall by the Campo dei Miracoli (where all the main attractions are), with separate sections for motorhomes/caravans and tour buses and a small shopping center with public toilets. A tip if you park here: walk into town from the side with the motorhome parking, which leads along a quiet back road. We took the main road that we drove in on, and it was busy and unpleasant.

Thanks to the famous Leaning Tower and its location near the sea, Pisa is absolutely mobbed with tour-bus and cruise-ship loads of tourists. And of course they all have to pose with the Tower as though they are holding it up, so it can be difficult to walk peacefully around. However, like all other crowded tourist attractions in the world, it's famous for a reason. It really is an astonishing sight and the lean is more dramatic than I expected it to be from pictures.

But for me, the coolest thing about Pisa is not the lean of its tower but the whole group of buildings of which it's a part. Laid out on the pancake-flat Campo dei Miracoli (Field of Miracles) is one of the most beautiful and interesting cathedrals in Italy, a lovely round baptistery to match, a separate belltower (the Leaning Tower), and the Camposanto, a rectangular marble courtyard once covered in frescoes and used for noble burials. These buildings, made of gleaming white marble and stretched out across a roomy green lawn, make such a beautiful sight and I really wish I could see it without the crowds. The cathedral is especially impressive and interesting.




Having read up on the logistics of Pisa, upon arrival I headed almost immediately for the ticket office. You need a ticket to enter each of the buildings listed above and, as in Siena, combo tickets are available. You can climb the Leaning Tower only on scheduled "tours" - by the time I got my ticket at about 10:00, the next available time was at 11:20. The experience is not cheap - 15 euros per person! By comparison, a combo ticket for all the rest of the sights, including two museums, is 10 euros. They must have recently hiked the price of the Tower tour, as my 2005 guidebook says it costs only 2 euros!

Ticket in hand, I started with a visit to the Camposanto while David wandered around the cathedral and tower, people-watched and snapped photos. The Camposanto was quite interesting: it's like a giant rectangular cloister with a beautiful grassy garden in the center.





In the covered walkway around it, the floor is lined with interesting tombstones, there are medieval and ancient tombs set up against the walls, and higher up on the walls are fragments of 14th-century frescoes. In a well-lit corner room are huge frescoes with toe-curling images of the Last Judgment and the torments of the damned.





Then I met up with David again and we visited the beautiful Baptistery, which is Romanesque on the bottom level and Gothic further up (since it took many years to complete).




Inside there is a large octagonal font, a small choir area, and another Pisano pulpit. You can climb a flight of stairs to the gallery, which gives some great views of the font and choir (which are difficult to see at ground level) and out to the Campo. Someone has thoughtfully cut a small square in the screen that faces the cathedral's west facade, allowing for a nice photo op.




While we were up there, we got to enjoy a demonstration of the baptistery's acoustic properties. One man positioned himself up in the gallery and another down below next to the font; after shushing all the visitors, they sang a loud clear note to each other, which echoed around the walls. It was very cool.

Then it was time for the tower tour, which David opted out of. They don't allow any personal belongings up there except a camera, so we would have had to check the camera bag in a locker and he didn't love the idea of the climb - or the lean of the tower - very much anyway. He was astonished that I was so willing to go myself, given my general fear of high places! But actually, the Leaning Tower seems like one of the safest bets among freestanding European towers, since its structural integrity is closely monitored by scientists and engineers from around the world. That's what I tried to keep in mind, anyway!

I somehow managed to be first in line for the 11:20 tour, despite not having arrived much in advance. At the designated time my ticket was punched and I was off, thinking I might achieve the small distinction of arriving at the top first. But even though I'm moderately fit, before I was even halfway up my heart was beating out of my chest, my legs were burning, and I was no longer interested in any such goal! Fortunately, we were required to stop at a terrace midway up anyway.



The view was magnificent even from that point, but the climb would have been worth it just for the experience of feeling the lean! I didn't expect this phenomenon at all, although I should have. The stairs run in a spiral just inside the outer wall of the tower, with solid stone walls on either side and only an occasional small window. So you lose track of what side you're on visually, but find yourself being pulled to the right especially as you come around the lower side, and feeling like you're going uphill as you go around the higher side. Combined with the spiral staircase, it all makes you feel rather off-kilter! But it is such fun and really a unique experience.


That's me waving at David in the center of the photo.


Note that the horizon is straight in this photo - quite a dramatic lean!

After maybe 10 minutes, we were allowed to continue all the way to the top. The top of the tower is remarkably open, which was rather alarming.



There's a fence around the edge, but from the edge you can climb up five steps to the bell platform. I couldn't help but think that if you tripped from one of those stairs, you could go tumbling right over the fence!



From the bell platform you can shimmy up about 10 more steps to the very top platform, which has a railing but also wasn't quite as secure as I would have liked! But I tried not to think about it and enjoy the views, which were spectacular. I was especially thrilled to be able to take "aerial" photos of the cathedral, which was one the main reason I climbed the tower.






After all that excitement and exercise, it was time to take a break from the crowds and find lunch somewhere. We walked towards the river until we were sufficiently away from the tourists and tourist restaurants, which didn't take long. We chose a nondescript cafe on a shopping street and had some very nice lasagne (David) and ravioli (me).

After lunch we continued the rest of the way to the River Arno, which is the same one that flows through Florence but the riverside is a lot less pretty in Pisa! Then we stopped at an ATM, where I got pooped on by a pigeon. Right on the top of my head. It's the first time I've had the pleasure of that experience and I'll be glad if I never have to repeat it! Fortunately my purse was well-stocked with tissues so I was able to remove the offending substance quite quickly and thoroughly, but of course the first thing I did when we got home was wash my hair! YUCK!!

We spent the afternoon finishing our tour of all the sights on the Campo, starting with the interior of the Duomo. It is remarkably large inside, with two aisles on each side of the nave and a very tall ceiling. The main art attraction is the best of all Pisano pulpits, with reliefs of biblical scenes and personifications of virtues and the liberal arts.





Then David rested on the base of a monumental fountain and watched the Tower posers while I visited the Sinopie Museum and the Cathedral Museum. The first one displays the sketches that underlie the frescoes in the Camposanto, which are important artistically but weren't terribly interesting to me.



But the Cathedral Museum was excellent. It displayed some of the original sculptures and a magnificent bronze door from the cathedral, along with ancient illuminated manuscripts, treasures and tapestries.


Detail from the bronze door, showing the Nativity and the Journey of the Magi.

Finally, we took a few more photos of the cathedral and baptistery in the afternoon light, but unfortunately the sky had become quite hazy so the pictures aren't that great.



There's a lot more information (not yet updated with our pictures) on Pisa here on Sacred Destinations.