ITALY – PISA – An Old Lady with a Backpack

JUNE 2, 2025

I had been visiting the kids in London, but they had to work during the week and the little ones had school. So I decided to take a quick trip to Italy. I was going to see my friend Guilia in Bologna, but she surprised me by being back in Canada. The flight to Pisa was cheaper than Bologna ($53 CDN) and the train tickets between cities was anywhere from $15 – 18, so I opted for Pisa first.

Archaeological evidence shows that Pisa was once a maritime city that maintained trade relations with other Mediterranean cities. There is evidence that it was inhabited during the fifth century BC.

My trusty GPSmycity was my tour guide. https://www.gpsmycity.com/

I opted to travel very light. Everything had to fit into a sling backpack. I was only going to be gone for 5 days and I wanted something that I could carry with me at all times. I also opted for hostels near the train stations. It was perfect.

SANTA MARIA DELLA SPINA is a small church built in 1230. It was originally built near the Arno River, but was moved to higher ground in 1871 because of water infiltration from the river.

It is called della Spina (“of the thorn”) because a thorn from Jesus’ crown of thorns was brought to the church in 1333. The “thorn” is no longer housed in this church. It is on display in the Chiesa de Santa Chiara. I did not go to see it.

It was not a very big church. The outside was amazing with 12 statues standing on the long side (I imagine they were the disciples). Mary holding baby Jesus was on the shorter side. The church was locked so I did not see inside to see if it was as nice as the exterior.

There are lots of covered porticos in Pisa to shelter pedestrians from the heat. Many entrances were decorated.

I went to GALILEO’S BIRTH HOUSE. It is not open to the public, but an important landmark, none the less.

Not far from his birth house is PALAZZO BOCCA. The Galilei family lived here, on the corner of Borgo Stretto and via Mercanti, from 1563-1574.

PALAZZO BOCCA is one of Pisa’s oldest streets. It is very narrow and is well known as one of Pisa’s top shopping streets. I didn’t buy anything.

CHIESA di SAN MICHELE was first mentioned in 1016. Its hard to believe they could build something so beautiful, and strong, so long ago.

I walked through KNIGHT’S SQUARE. During medieval times, Knights’ Square was Pisa’s political center. The square is dedicated to the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen. They were established to defend the coast from Turkish pirates.

Within the Square is the the PALAZZO della CAROVANA. It was built in 1562–1564 for the headquarters of the Knights of St. Stephen. The name, meaning “Palace of the Convoy”, derives from the three-year period undertaken by the initiates of the Order for their training, called “la Carovana”. Today it is part of the University of Pisa.

The CHURCH of SANTO STEFANO dei CAVALIERI is also in the square. The Church of the Knights of the Holy and Military Order of Saint Stephen is the historic church of the Order.

It was founded by Grand Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany in 1561.

The CLOCK PALACE is famous as the site where a prominent nobleman (Count Ugolino) was held prisoner and died of starvation. (It is directly across from the church. Nice….) Today, the palace is home to the University Library.

Walking through the Clock Palace arch I was in the SQUARE OF MIRACLES COMPLEX (Piazza dei Miracoli), formally known as Piazza del Duomo. It is a walled 8.87-hectare (21.9-acre) compound.

It is all owned by the Catholic Church and is dominated by four great religious edifices: Pisa Cathedral, the Pisa Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and the Camposanto Monumentale (‘Monumental Cemetery’). It is also the site of the Ospedale Nuovo di Santo Spirito (‘New Hospital of the Holy Spirit’), which now houses the Sinopias Museum (Museo delle Sinopie) and the Cathedral Museum (Museo dell’Opera). It is partly paved and mostly grassed.

The famous LEANING TOWER of PISA was right in front of me.

This marble tower is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the Pisa Cathedral. It was built between 1173 and 1372 and started to lean almost immediately, due to the soft ground which could not support the weight. (Ironically, the tower has survived four major earthquakes because of the soft soil.) Construction halted for nearly 100 years because of wars. The lean got worse as the construction continued into the 14th century. By 1990, the tilt had reached 5.5 degrees (4.5 meters or 15 ft). Work to stabilize it began in 1993 and by 2001 the tilt was reduced to 3.97 degrees (3.9 meters or 12 ft 10 in).

you can see the lean by the outside brick wall

The original height of the tower was 60 metres (196 ft 10 in). It is now 56.67 m (185 ft 11 in) on the high side and 55.86 metres (183 ft 3 in) on the low side. The width of the walls at the base is 2.44 m (8 ft). Its weight is estimated at 14,500 tonnes (16,000 tons). The tower has 251 steps to the seventh level bells. The steps show wear from the 5 million visitors each year.

There are seven bells at the top of the tower. The bells are tuned to correspond with the notes of the major scale, with one bell for each note. The bells vary in size and weight, with the largest weighing nearly 8,000 pounds. The bells are no longer rung due to concerns about their vibrations potentially worsening the tower’s lean and causing instability.

Between 1589 and 1592, Galileo Galilei dropped two spheres of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that their time of descent was independent of their mass.

Before climbing the tower, I had to place my backpack in a (free) locker. It was very convenient not to have to carry it throughout my visit.

From the tower I went to the BAPTISTERY. It is a massive marble building and is almost as tall as the tower at 54.86 meters (180 feet) tall. It was built between 1152-1163 on the same sand as the Leaning Tower. It leans 0.6 degrees.

Galileo was baptized here in 1564.

The interior left me gobsmacked. It was basically a huge empty building with a baptismal font in the centre. 12 massive columns, representing the 12 apostles surrounded it. A bronze sculpture of John the Baptist stood in the center. The acoustics were amazing, and a guard had to keep reminding people to hush.

Suddenly, one of the guardians stepped up close to the alter and began singing. OMG! Her beautiful voice filled the building! I always seem to luck out on such unique experiences, and I truly felt blessed to witness it.

Across the lawn was the PISA CATHEDRAL (Duomo di Pisa). Construction began in 1064 and was completed in 1092.

There were two huge brass doors, which used to be the entrance. They were cordoned off and people had to enter through a side door.

The first thing to strike me was the black and white marble.

Second was the fantastic mosaic floor.

Third was the coffered ceiling.

As I moved along the side aisle, taking in the amazing and huge works of art

I came to the marble and polished granite pulpit. It was the most ornate and beautiful pulpit I had ever seen.

The apse was magnificent, with a mosaic of Christ Enthroned with the Virgin and St. John.

In one of the transepts was GALILEO’S LAMP. At precisely noon on March 25, a ray of light shines through a round window on the south side of the nave and lands on the same spot every year. The lamp is to commemorate Galileo’s theory of isochronism of the pendulum while he was watching its swinging from the roof of the nave. The original lamp is in the Camposanto (“Monumental Cemetery”).

The CAMPOSANTO (“Monumental Cemetery”) is next door to the Cathedral. Campo Santo translates as “holy field”, because it is said to have been built around a shipload of sacred soil from Golgotha, during the Third Crusade. It had the layout of cloisters. It was intended to be a church, but plans changed during construction, which began in 1278.

The floor (graves) were terribly worn and it was obvious that it was very, very old.

Some graves were very elaborate and cordoned off.

There were other grand funerary monuments.

The Campo Santo once contained a huge collection of Roman sarcophagi, but there are only 84 left.

There are three chapels within the cemetery, but somehow I missed those. At some point one gets overwhelmed with chapels, monuments, and grandeur.

The walls are covered in over 2600 meters squared of frescoes, more than the Sistine Chapel. On 27 July 1944, a bomb fragment from an Allied air raid started a fire in the Camposanto, which burned for three days, causing the timber lead roof to collapse. The destruction of the roof severely damaged everything inside the cemetery, destroying most of the sculptures and sarcophagi and compromising all the frescoes. After WWII, restoration work began. The roof was restored as closely as possible to its pre-war appearance and the frescoes were separated from the walls to be restored and displayed elsewhere. Once the frescoes had been removed, the preliminary drawings, called sinopie were also removed. They are in the Museum of the Sinopie, on the opposite side of the Square. More on those later.

What remains of the frescoes are beautiful

and horrifying.

I went across the Square to the MUSEUM of the SINOPIE. As mentioned earlier, this is where the drawings, under the frescoes, are now kept.

In some cases, they showed the sinopie with a picture of the finished fresco beside it. The talent that went into the drawings was incredible.

The detail was so minute, so intricate. To think that someone had to paint the wet plaster to match the drawing underneath, was mind blowing. Kind of like colouring a picture that is covered in mud. HOW? It was all explained as I moved through the museum. But even with the explanation, I was still blown away.

There were pictures of frescoes that I saw in the Monumental Cemetery, showing what the original should have looked.

I collected by backpack and headed back to the Hostel. On the way, I passed the ORTO BOTANICO. The Botanical Garden was the first university botanical garden in Europe when it was founded in 1544. It has been in its current location since 1591. Maybe because it was getting close to their closing time, or because it was off-season; but it seemed I had the gardens to myself. I had a peaceful stroll through the wooded paths, beside ponds and through the gardens, which feature some aquatic plants that are so endangered there are no longer found in nature.