As the plane circles down towards Pisa's Galileo Galilei airport, sharp-eyed visitors will see the Leaning Tower. Perhaps rather squatter than you'd expect, the ochre-coloured stone tower unmistakably leans. But this marvellous Tuscan town has many more tricks up its sleeve - the Tower is but one element of the Campo dei Miracoli, the Field of Miracles.
Pisa's great age was between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and this was when the Campo dei Miracoli was built. Back then, as well as being an important centre for trade, banking and learning, Pisa was still a port (the seas receded long ago). The result was an enormously affluent town, and the evidence is everywhere to see in the Pisan-Romanesque architecture dating from the time.
The Leaning Tower (Torre Pendente) is not meant to look that way of course. Started in 1173, the tower began to lean before it was even complete. Over the subsequent 800 years, a succession of architects had a go at straightening things out (some making things rather worse) until in 1990 the Tower was shut completely, City authorities fearing it might collapse. A project led by Professor John Burland of Imperial College London employed a complex combination of weights, micro-drilling and removal of parts of the foundations to bring the Tower back to a comfortably rakish tilt.
Unarguably the most famous scion of the city is, of course, Galileo Galilei.Galilei, late medieval genius and (quite literally) a Renaissance man was an astrologer, philosopher and physicist. Forming the opinion that the earth rotated the sun he rather unwisely publicly reported his findings. The good Catholic Archbishop of Pisa duly delivered Galileo to the Inquisition who, under pain of execution by burning, forced the man of science to recant. There seems an attractive irony that half a millennium later, the main gateway to the city, Pisa Airport, a monument to progress, science and physics should be named after Galileo.
To the left you'll find a selection of hotels, to get you in the mood
- see also our full listings of Pisa hotels.
