The Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of the most iconic images in the world. It’s touristy but was worth a visit. It is surprising to see that the famous tower is only a small part of a gleaming while architectural complex – featuring a massive cathedral and baptistery – that dominates the grand green square called the field of miracles. The rest of the city is virtually tourist free and merits a better wander for its rich history, architecture, and student vibe. We unfortunately had a rainout of our city-driven activities.
Imagine arriving in Pisa as a sailor in the 12th century, when the river came to just outside the walls surrounding this square, the church here was one of the biggest in the world, and this ensemble in gleaming while marble was the most impressive space in Christendom. Calling it the Field of Miracles (Campo di Miracoli) would not be a hyperbole.
Scattered across golf-course green lawn are five grand buildings: the cathedral (or Duomo), its bell tower (the Leaning Tower), the Baptistery, the hospital (today’s Museum of the Sinopias), and the Camposanto Cemetery. Each building has a simple ground floor and rows of delicate columns and arches that form open-air arcades, giving the Campo a pleasant visual unity.
The style is called Pisan Romanesque. Unlike traditional Romanesque, with its heavy fortress-like feel, Pisan Romanesque is light and elegant. At ground level, most of the structures have simple half-columns and arches. On the upper levels, you’ll see a little of everything – tight rows of thin columns; pointed Gothic gables and prickly spires; Byzantine mosaics and horseshoe arches; and geometric designs (such as diamonds) and striped, colored marbles inspired by mosques in Muslim lands.
Architecturally, the Campo is unique and exotic. Traditionally, its buildings marked the main events of every Pisan’s life: christened in the Baptistery, married in the Duomo, called to celebrate by the bells in the tower, healed in the hospital, and buried in the Camposanto Cemetery.
Lining this field of artistic pearls are dozens of people who have simultaneously had the same bright idea: posing for a photo though they’re propping up the Leaning Tower. Although the smooth green carpet looks like the ideal picnic spot – and a few people are doing just that – officially, lounging on this lawn can result in a $25 fine.
Leaning Tower – A 15-foot lean form the vertical makes the Leaning Tower one of Europe’s most recognizable images. You can see it for free – it’s always viewable – or you can pay to climb nearly 300 stairs to the top.
The off-kilter Tower parallels Pisa’s history. It was started in the late 12th century, when Pisa was at its peak: one of the world’s richest, most powerful, and most sophisticated cities. Pisans had built their huge cathedral to reflect their city’s superpower status, and the cathedral’s bell tower – the Leaning Tower- was the perfect complement. But as Pisa’s power declined, the Tower reclined, and both have required a great deal of effort to prop up. Modern engineering has stabilized the Tower, so you can admire it in all its cockeyed glory and even climb up for a commanding view. (we did not).
Rising up alongside the cathedral, the Tower is nearly 200 feet tall and 55 feet wide, weighing 14,000 tons and currently leaning at a five-degree angle (15 feet off the vertical axis). It started to lean almost immediately after construction began (it would take two centuries to finish the structure). Count the eight stories – a simple base, six stories of columns (forming arcades), and a belfry on top. The inner structural core is a hollow cylinder built of limestone bricks, faced with white marble. The thin columns of the open air arcades make the heavy Tower seem light and graceful.
The Tower was built over two centuries by at least three different architects. You can see how each successive architect tried to correct the leaning problem – once halfway up (after the fourth story), once at the belfry on the top.
The first stones were laid in 1173, probably under the direction of the architect Bonanno Pisano (who also designed the Duomo’s bronze back door). Five years later, just as the base and the first arcade were finished, someone said , “Is it me, or does that look crooked? :-)The heavy Tower – resting on a very shallow 13-foot foundation – was sinking on the south side into the marshy, multilayered unstable soil. (Actually, all of the Campo’s buildings tilt somewhat). The builders carried on anyway, until they’d finished four stories (the base, plus three arcade floors). The, construction suddenly halted – no one knows why – and for a century the Tower sat half-finished and visibly leaning.
Around 1272, the next architect to correct the problem by angling the next three stories backward, in the opposite direction of the lean. The project than again sat mysteriously idle for nearly another century. Finally, Tommaso Pisano put the belfry on the top (c1350 – 1372), also kinking it to overcome the leaning.
After the Tower’s completion, several attempts were made to stop its slow-motion fall. The architect/artist/writer Giorgio Vasari reinforced the base in 1550, and it actually worked. But in 1838, well-intentioned engineers pumped out groundwater, destabilizing the Tower and causing it to increase its lean at a rate of a millimeter per year.
As well as gravity, erosion threatens the Tower. Since its construction, 135 of the Tower’s 180 marble columns have had to be replaced. Stone decay, deposits of lime and calcium phosphate, accumulations of dirt and moss, cracking from the stress of the lean – all of these are factors in its decline.
It go so bad that in 1990 the Tower was closed for repairs, and $30 million was spent cleaning it and trying to stabilize it. Engineers dried the soil with pipes containing liquid nitrogen, anchored the Tower to the ground with steel cables, and buried 600 tons of lead on the north side as a counterweight (not visible) – all with little success. The breakthrough came when they drilled 15-foot-deep holes in the ground on the north side and sucked out 60 tons of soil, allowing the Tower to sink on the north side and straighten out its lean by about six inches. All the work to shore up, straighten, and clean the Tower has probably turned the clock back a few centuries. In fact, art historians figure the Tower leans today as much as it did when Galileo reputedly conducted his gravity experiment here 400 years ago.
Lucca
Surrounded by well-preserved ramparts, layered with history, alternately quaint and urbane, Lucca charms its visitors. The city is a paradox. Though it hasn’t been involved in a war since 1430, it is Italy’s most impressive fortress city, encircled by a perfectly intact wall.
Most cities tear down their walls to make way for modern traffic, but Lucca’s effectively keeps out both traffic and, it seems, the stress of the modern world. Locals are very protective of their wall, which they enjoy like a community roof garden.
Lucca has no single monumental sight to attract tourists – it’s simply a uniquely human and undamaged never-bombed city. Romanesque churches and shady piazzas filled with soccer-playing children seem to be around every corner.
Even its touristic center – the mostly traffic-free old town – feels more local than touristy. The city is big enough to have its own heritage and pride, yet small enough that it seems like the Lucchesi (loo-KAY-zee) all went to school together. Simply put, Lucca has elegance and plenty of reasons to be proud.
Piazza dell-Anfiteatro –
The architectural ghost of a Roman amphitheater can be felt in the delightful Piazza dell-Anfiteatro. With the fall of Rome, the theater (which seated 10,000 and sat just outside the original rectangular city walls) was gradually cannibalized for its stones and inhabited by people living in a mishmash of huts.
The huts were cleared away at the end of the 19th century to better show off the town’s illustrious past and make one purely secular square (all the others are dominated by a church) for the town market. The modern street level is nine feet above the original arena floor. Today, the square is a circle of touristy shops, galleries, mediocre restaurants, and inviting al fresco café’s.
Study the exterior of the Roman Amphitheater and notice how medieval scavengers transformed it. Barbarians didn’t know how to make bricks. But they could recycle building material and stack stones in order to camp out in Roman ruins. Study the stonework and see how medieval buildings filled the ancient arches.
Church of San Frediano –
This impressive church was built in 1112 by the pope to one-up Lucca’s bishop and his spiffy cathedral. Lucca was the first Mediterranean stop on the pilgrim route from northern Europe, and the pope wanted to remind pilgrims that the action, the glory, and the papacy awaited them in Rome. Therefore, he had the church made “Roman-esque.”
The pure marble façade frames an early Christian Roman-style mosaic of Christ with his 12 apostles.
Via Fillungo Shops – Lucca’s best street to stroll and main pedestrian drag connects the town’s two busiest squares: Piazza dell-Anfiteatro (which we just left) and Piazza San Michele. Along the way, you’ll get a taste of Lucca’s rich past, including several elegant, century-old storefronts.