Pisa, Leaning Tower

Pisa’s campanile, or leaning tower, even more than Rome’s Coliseum, is the most famous travel symbol of Italy. Even if it were not leaning, it would be a superb tourist sight. Built, starting in the 1100s, it is round, eight stories, 163 feet high, with 294 well-worn steps. As the tower is climbed, the worn place on the steps changes from the outside, to the middle, then to the inside. Somehow, walking these stairs reminded us of walking on an escalator that is stopped. We were careful, as the marble on the outside deck is very slick.

In the early 1990s they closed the tower for foundation repair, and when we visited in 1995 we could see the construction equipment. After 11 years, 11 months of repairs, as of December 2001, the tower was reopened to the Public.

The Tower (or Torre Pendente) stands on the Piazza dei Miracoli, “The Square of Miracles,” a green field of barely ten acres which it shares with the Duomo (Cathedral) started in 1068, the Battestero (baptistery) begun in 1153, Campo Santo (the cemetery), Museo della Sinopie (Sinopie Museum), and many, many tourist shops and kiosks, along the inside of the city wall. The cemetery, Campo Santo, was built on the burial ground to which fifty-three shiploads of earth had been brought from Jerusalem in 1203 by the Crusaders.