We’ve all heard of Pisa and its leaning tower. It’s one of the most famous structures in the world. And on our Italy trip, we stopped off for a few hours to view this place we’d heard so much about. And, as it turns out, all of the rumors were true. The tower does lean! Shocking right?
But in all seriousness, Pisa is a rustic city of 90+ thousand people and there are many things to see and do. Though, if you’re like us, and you only have a limited window of time, we recommend checking out the Piazza del Duomo. Here you will find the leaning tower, Duomo (Cathedral), Baptistry and the Camposanto Monumentale (cemetery).
The Duomo, much like the other cathedrals we visited, was very beautiful and gothic-looking on the inside. It did have a few interesting objects, such as a sarcophagus with a glass side that allowed you to see the decomposing corpse inside. The most notable feature was the pulpit sculpted by Giovanni Pisano in the 14th century. It depicts Christian salvation and judgement day through sculpted scenes of prophets, apostles, evangelists, angels, Mary, and Jesus Christ himself.
The Camposanto Monumentale is located just outside of the cathedral. As you walk along over the marble floors, under which are many graves, sarcophagi line the walls that are painted with fading and cracked murals. Many of the murals depict biblical events, such as the end of time and hell, complete with a horned devil birthing damned humans (art is weird).
The Pisa Baptistery is the largest baptistery in Italy and has very near perfect acoustics. Every so often, one of the employees will demonstrate by making sounds that echo around the entire building. It’s a pretty neat thing to experience.
The tower itself is pretty cool to see. And if you have time, you can climb the nearly 300 steps to the top. We did not as we were limited on time, but we imagine all of those steps are quite the workout. And of course you have to take photos of yourself leaning on/holding up the tower. If you don’t, can you even really call yourself a tourist?
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