This is another place thats always been on the ‘bucket list’ if only for the fact that it is one of the “Wonders of the World”. It deserves to be. It is exquisite for its singularity.
Pisa was and to a large degree still is a walled city. Whilst so much of it has grown outside the walls most of the original walled area still exists and the tower and the cathedral and other elements are still clearly contained…
but of course the star attraction in all of this is ‘The Leaning Tower of Pisa’. Without trying to diminish its signifigance it is just the ‘bell tower’ for the cathedral (completed 1092)- it was started in about 1173 but not completed for a further 200 years as it started t0 lean as the builders reached the fourth level. Sometime later its lean stabilised so they started again but it leant further and so construction was stopped (although there are some politics involved in this stop/start) again. During a third attempt to complete it they built the next levels at a cant to try and counter the lean but over the ensuing years it took on a greater lean and actually sank into the ground so that level one is actually below ground level..
Various shots from different angles put it into perspective…
but the tower is but one element of this remarkable place…
there’s the baptistery, the Piazza del Duomo (Pisa Cathedral) and the Camposanto Monumentale a monument to the dead which was added in 1278 but not completed until til 1464….
This place is awe inspiring (and no, we’re not dead yet). The cathedral too is no less impressive…
although the baptistery is somewhat more austere than its counterpart in Florence…
Yet again it is late at night as I piece this report together and I tend to forget those things which should be included. One of those things is the bizarre nature of the bazzar that surrounds this icon of history…
where dark skinned men try to flog you anything from handbags to watches to umbrellas and all kinds of trashy memorabilia – it demeans the signifigance of the area. Mind you, we’ve encountered these black fellas everywhere flogging something along with some personal sob story.
A bit more of Pisa as we travelled some back streets to get a bit of a feel for the place…
built on the banks of the river Arno. The walls of the city end at the river. Its an attractive city spoilt like so much of Italy we’ve seen so far by its dereliction and dirtiness. Rubbish seems to accumulate everywhere and nobody seems to care or notice.
On our way to Pisa from Genova we came across some typically spectacular landscapes, some of which Jude photographed with the iPad…
There is no doubt that much of Italy is scenically fabulous.