As far as cruise excursions went this one could easily be called The Day of Towers. If you’ve been reading the travelogues so far then you’ll know that we’d spent the morning in Italy at a medieval town called San Gimignano, famed for its many towers, and we’d then had a very entertaining lunch break at the Tenuta Torciano Winery for wine tasting and a towering (yeah, I’m stretching it; sue me) acting performance from one of our fellow tourists in his role as the young lover showing how to consume dessert wine. Before making our way back to the port of Livorno where the Emerald Princess awaited our return we would have a short visit to the city of Pisa and a chance to see its most famous monument, the Leaning Tower.
Visiting Pisa
Our bus parked at Parcheggio Via Pietrasantina if you’re interested in looking that up on a map of Pisa to see how far you need to walk. I’m mentioning this because one person in our group had an injury that affected her ability to walk (no, not my wife for once) and ended up getting a taxi back from the tower to the bus at the end of the visit. It’s not too far to walk – perhaps ten to fifteen minutes – although it does require crossing rail tracks at one point. Half of us made it before a coming train stopped the remainder. One person in our group stopped to take a photo on the tracks. You will never guess who that was.
A turn to the right, a road to the left, follow that to the right, cross over the road, run the gauntlet of souvenir and general tat sellers in front of the twelfth century city wall along Largo Cocco Griffi, through the archway on the left at the end, and we were finally in the Piazza del Duomo (or Cathedral Square). The sight that greeted us is the one you see below: a grassy enclosure housing the domed structure of the San Giovanni Baptistery, the Cathedral just behind that, the Camposanto building (cemetery) behind and to the left, and, of course, beyond everything else, that bell tower with its lean.
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from this visit to the Leaning Tower of Pisa but I was more impressed just from this very first view of the area surrounding it than I thought I would be. Sometimes, you can see something online or in photos or on television only to discover that the reality doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Pisa was the opposite of that. I’ve seen countless photos – and you’ll soon see I’ve added to that number significantly – but something in the back of my mind whispered Yeah, but it won’t be quite like that when you see it in real life. No, it was better. The tower leaned more than I thought (yes, even allowing for the wine tasting event prior to this trip), the tower was taller than I’d expected, and the other buildings in the Piazza del Duomo were things I hadn’t really thought about before but were all absolutely gorgeous to look at from an architectural perspective. This is what happens when you are only going to spend 45 minutes or so visiting a place; you don’t do your research properly and you don’t realise there’s a lot more to Pisa than just its tower.
That very limited time exploring Pisa naturally meant we were equally limited in what we could do. Climbing the tower was out of the question and a visit to one of the other buildings was possible but wouldn’t have done the place any justice as an enquiring tourist eager to learn and see as much as possible. We’d already anticipated simply taking some photos of the tower and tourists in the area so we saw no reason to change this plan but first, a quick look at what else you can see if you travel to this Italian city and find yourself with time to soak up experiences into your brain.
Pisa Baptistery
The Pisa Baptistery of Saint John is the largest building of its kind in Italy and suffers from a fabulous Jekyll and Hyde personality disorder throughout, partly due to construction taking in the region of two centuries to complete. You can clearly see this in the photos below. Starting at the base, the first two levels have a clear Romanesque design (the arches give this away) but above that the style switches to Gothic as by the time they were added this was more fashionable. The baptistery has two roofs: the original design included a pyramidal shape but an outer dome was added later on. Doorways and columns share a similar split in styling but the most obvious oddity is the domed roof where one half is red and the other grey. The red-tiled side faces towards the sea to the west of Pisa and the grey-tiled side catches the sunrise to the east. It’s certainly different. We never went inside but certainly will do should we return.
Pisa Cathedral
Pisa Cathedral was naturally built before the construction of the baptistery. Generally Romanesque in its appearance there are elements of other styles, most notably some Islamic influences in internal arches and a Moorish-inspired elliptical dome. Indeed, the funding for the building of the cathedral came from spoils of war fighting Muslims in Sicily. As with all old buildings there have been many modifications and additions over the centuries but one surviving element from around 1180 when it was cast is the impressive, bronze Door of Saint Rainerius on the east side of the cathedral. Well, almost. The one you see today is a copy but the original is on display in the cathedral museum. This was the main door through which people entered the church and it is decorated with 24 relief sculptures.
The Leaning Tower Of Pisa
Officially, it’s just the campanile or bell tower; to everyone around the world it’s the Leaning Tower of Pisa and it’s the main – and likely for most people, only – reason to visit the city. The famous lean comes from poor soil that couldn’t support the building’s weight and it was noticed early enough in construction that work stopped for a time to allow the ground to compact more in the hope that the rest of the building could continue. After the first three levels of the tower were completed subsequent levels were designed to have one side slightly higher than the other in order to counteract the angle but this was only a temporary fix as the increased weight of the higher floors started to increase the lean again. At its most leany (that’s not a word but roll with it) the tower was nearly six degrees off upright although this has been corrected slightly to four degrees today. It’s not in the interests of the city to completely remove the tilt, though, because tourist attractions encourage the flow of money. Limited numbers of people are allowed to climb the steps inside the tower at a time and if you want to do so then you should know there are just shy of 300 of them to force yourself up.
I was impressed by just how close you can get to the tower in Pisa and you’ll be impressed that I’ve not included every photo I took from every angle around it. Restraint from me: don’t get used to it. The angle of the lean was most obvious at the base.
I’ve said before that the tower was larger than I thought it would be and you might be able to get a sense of the scale by looking at the upper tiers and the people on it.
Tourists Posing At The Leaning Tower Of Pisa
Okay, so we’ve had a bit of an architectural explanation of the buildings in the surrounding area and we’ve seen plenty of photos of the tower itself but if you’ve read the title of this post and that’s been the thing that brought you to this page in the first place then you’ll be wanting to see photos of the tourists in front of the tower.
It’s estimated that somewhere around six million tourists visit Pisa each year with in the region of half a million ascending the tower. But, even for those visitors who don’t pay to climb to the top, the Leaning Tower is the major draw and for a lot of those people – thanks to the explosion in digital photography and social media sharing – one of the clichéd tourist things to do is to pose in front of the landmark as if pushing it over, keeping it up, or something else entirely. That didn’t appeal to me because as anyone who knows me and my wife knows, we don’t appear in photos. What did appeal to me was taking photos of other people posing, but not in front of the tower; from some other angle entirely just to see how interesting the poses looked out of context. I’m not the first person to do this, of course, and it’s probably becoming a clichéd thing in its own right but I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the Piazza del Duomo and snapping all the tourists adopting all manner of positions for photographs by their partners or families.
I’ve saved my favourite photo until last and I think it’s easy to see why it’s my favourite. I love the inventiveness of this particular tourist trying to get something a little different with her shot in front of the Leaning Tower. The empty ice cream cone is a masterful touch. The fun elements of this pose were my position relative to her to get a full-on in-the-middle-of-licking-it photograph and also my proximity. Thanks to having a noisy camera there was no way to sneakily take this picture and as soon as my mirror flipped and the shutter fired off both the posing tourist and her boyfriend looked at me and burst into laughter as they realised I’d captured them. I would dearly love to see the photo they actually took that day in Pisa.
Leaving Pisa
The small amount of time we had in Pisa came to an end and we left the enclosed square along with its historical and architectural marvels behind to once again run the gauntlet of sales people back to where we were due to meet ahead of the walk back to the bus.
Necklace?
No thanks.
It is good material. Only a few Euros.
No, I’m okay, thanks.
You try on necklace?
No. Thank you.
I give you two necklaces for a good price.
I don’t even want one. Please go away.
Bracelet? Good quality.
Those people over there said they were after a bracelet.
The bracelet will look good on you. You try?
God, I was really hoping that was going to work. Would you please fuck off now?
Two bracelets for a good price?
Final Thoughts On Pisa
This was another one of those places that we really needed more time at and probably closer to half a day or a day to really get the most out of it. The Leaning Tower was more impressive than I’d given it credit for ahead of the excursion and the nearby buildings could easily engross our inquisitive little minds for hours and use up a fair chunk of data storage on my camera too. Seeing the tourists posing for photos in front of the tower was an absolute joy and it’s almost worth an extended visit to Pisa just for that alone. We’ll be back in the region in 2020 barring any world-spanning disaster that stops almost all international travel although our plan is to visit Florence this time around. A return trip to Pisa is something we would not be averse to in the future, though.
In the next cruise diary post from this series I’ll cover the evening departure from Livorno aboard Emerald Princess, our last night on the ship. After that it’s the disembarkation tour in Rome to conclude this Mediterranean adventure.