🇮🇹 Italy · Central Italy (Lazio and Tuscany)
There are few images as instantly recognisable as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That white marble silhouette leaning off the vertical, defying gravity for more than eight centuries, is one of those monuments almost everyone has seen in photos before setting foot in Italy. But anyone who comes to Pisa discovers that the tower is not alone: it is part of a dazzling ensemble, the Piazza dei Miracoli (the Square of Miracles), where the cathedral, the baptistery, the camposanto and the tower itself rise in white marble on green grass, in one of the most perfect scenes of the Italian Middle Ages.
Pisa was much more than its tower. Between the 11th and 13th centuries it was one of Italy's four great maritime republics — along with Genoa, Venice and Amalfi — a naval and commercial power that dominated the western Mediterranean and built up the wealth with which it raised those monuments. Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science, was also from here, and the city still beats to the rhythm of its old and prestigious university, full of students, bars and life.
This guide covers Pisa with a practical, warm eye: how to visit the Piazza dei Miracoli and climb the tower, what else to see in the old town beyond the cliché of the photo holding up the tower, how to get there from the airport or by train, where to eat a good cecina or a Tuscan dish, and how to make the most of it alone or combined with Lucca and the rest of Tuscany. It is worth giving it more than the half hour of the photo: Pisa has a history and a charm that take you by surprise.
Pisa's origins are lost in Antiquity: there was an Etruscan settlement and, above all, a Roman colony that made use of its position beside the Arno, close to the sea, as a port. But its great moment came in the Middle Ages. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, Pisa became one of Italy's great maritime republics, a naval power that came to dominate much of the western Mediterranean, with colonies and trade routes across Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearics and as far as North Africa and the Holy Land. With the wealth of that trade and of its military victories, the Pisans raised, from 1063, the extraordinary ensemble of the Piazza dei Miracoli: the cathedral, the baptistery, the camposanto and the famous bell tower, which began to lean during its own construction, in 1173, because of soft, clayey ground. The republic's decline came with the naval defeat by Genoa at the battle of Meloria (1284), a blow Pisa never recovered from. In 1406 it fell under the rule of Florence, its great Tuscan rival, and became a subject city. Under the Medici, however, it lived a cultural revival: Galileo Galilei was born here in 1564, and the University of Pisa established itself as one of the most important centres of learning in Italy. After centuries as a provincial city of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and then of a unified Italy, Pisa suffered bombing in the Second World War, but the Piazza dei Miracoli survived. In 1987 Unesco listed it as World Heritage, and between 1990 and 2001 a complex engineering operation stabilised the tower, which stopped leaning further and was secured for centuries. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historic heart of Italy: Rome and Lazio, cradle of the Empire and seat of the papacy; the Tuscany of the Etruscans, the communal republics of Siena and Pisa, and Florence, the city that gave the world the Renaissance.
Read the history of Central Italy (Lazio and Tuscany) →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Pisa's origins are ancient and, in part, hazy. Tradition and some classical sources credit it with a very remote founding, and even with legends linking it to Greek colonists. What archaeology confirms is that there was a settlement in the area tied to the Etruscans, the people who dominated this part of central Italy before Rome's rise, and that Pisa's position — beside the river Arno, near its mouth on the Tyrrhenian Sea and at a crossroads of routes — made it valuable as a port and trading point from very early on.
With Rome's expansion, Pisa was absorbed into the Roman world and, around the 2nd century BC, became a colony. Under Rome it was a prosperous city and a military and commercial port of some importance on the Tyrrhenian, connected by roads to the rest of the peninsula. It is worth remembering that in Antiquity Pisa was much closer to the sea than it is today: over the centuries, sediment carried by the Arno and the Serchio filled in the area and pushed the coastline several kilometres away, leaving today's Pisa inland.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Pisa went through the dark centuries of invasions and changing rulers (Goths, Byzantines, Lombards, Franks) like so many Italian cities, always keeping its seafaring vocation. That vocation would be the basis of its great leap in the Middle Ages, when it became one of the naval powers of the Mediterranean.
Pisa's great moment came in the High Middle Ages. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, Pisa became one of Italy's four great maritime republics — along with Genoa, Venice and Amalfi — city-states that based their power and wealth on trade and command of the sea. Pisa came to have a powerful fleet and to control trade routes across the western Mediterranean.
The Pisans set up colonies and trading bases, dominated Sardinia and Corsica for a time, traded with North Africa, Spain, southern Italy and the Levant, and took an active part in the Crusades, which opened markets for them in the Holy Land. Their ships carried spices, textiles, metals and goods of every kind, and the city built up a considerable fortune. That naval power also translated into famous military victories against Muslim states, such as the capture of bases in the Mediterranean, which boosted its prestige and its plunder.
It was with that wealth that Pisa was able to finance, from 1063, the building of the extraordinary monumental complex of today's Piazza dei Miracoli: the great marble cathedral, the baptistery, the bell tower and, later, the camposanto. The so-called 'Pisan Romanesque', with its façades of stacked colonnaded galleries, was born here and spread across Tuscany. Pisa was living its golden age, when it was one of the richest and most influential cities in the Mediterranean.
The Piazza dei Miracoli complex (officially Piazza del Duomo) is the crowning work of medieval Pisa and the reason for its worldwide fame. It all began in 1063 with the building of the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, funded with the spoils of Pisan naval victories. The cathedral, an imposing basilica of white and grey marble with its characteristic façade of colonnaded galleries, defined the Pisan Romanesque style. The baptistery (begun in 1152) went up alongside it later, then the bell tower and, in the 13th century, the Camposanto Monumentale, the monumental cemetery whose ground, legend says, was covered with earth brought from Golgotha in the Holy Land.
The absolute star, however, is the bell tower, the famous Leaning Tower. Construction began in 1173. But when barely the first floors had gone up, the tower began to sink on one side: the subsoil in the area is soft and clayey, unable to carry such a weight evenly. Work stopped for almost a century, partly because of Pisa's wars; that pause, paradoxically, saved the tower, because it let the ground settle and compact enough to keep it from collapsing. When building resumed, the architects tried to compensate for the lean by raising the upper floors slightly tilted the other way, so the tower actually has a gentle curve, like a banana. It was completed around 1372.
Over the following centuries the tower went on leaning little by little, becoming a famous curiosity. Its growing tilt would eventually threaten to bring it down, which in the 20th century would force one of the most famous engineering operations in the world to save it.
Pisa's golden age did not last for ever. Its great rival at sea was Genoa, the other great maritime republic of the Tyrrhenian, and the commercial and naval competition between them ended in open war. The decisive blow came in 1284, at the naval battle of Meloria, off the Pisan coast: the Genoese fleet inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the Pisan one, sinking and capturing much of its shipping and taking thousands of prisoners. So many Pisans are said to have been held captive in Genoa that the saying arose that "to see Pisa you had to go to Genoa".
Meloria marked the beginning of the end of Pisa as a great naval power. The city lost control of its routes and colonies, its maritime economy weakened and, on top of that, its port began to silt up with sediment carried by the rivers, which in time would leave it cut off from the sea and without its main source of power. Internal struggles and conflicts with other Tuscan cities added to this.
Weakened, Pisa gradually fell into the orbit of its great land rival: Florence. In 1406, after a siege, Florence conquered Pisa and absorbed the city into its territory. For the proud Pisans it was a humiliation, and there were several attempts to regain independence in the decades that followed, but all failed. Pisa became a subject city, part first of the Republic and then of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany ruled by the powerful Medici family. Its age of glory as an independent republic was over.
Although Pisa had lost its political independence, under Florentine rule and especially under the Medici family it lived a notable cultural and scientific revival. The grand dukes of Tuscany invested in the city: they reorganised and strengthened the old University of Pisa (whose origins go back to the 14th century and which was refounded and reformed by the Medici), turning it into one of the most important centres of learning in Italy. Cosimo I de' Medici, in the 16th century, also commissioned the artist and architect Giorgio Vasari to redesign the Piazza dei Cavalieri as the seat of the Order of the Knights of St Stephen, a naval and religious order, giving the city new Renaissance buildings.
Pisa's most illustrious son was born in this period: Galileo Galilei, considered the father of modern science, came into the world in the city in 1564. Galileo studied and taught at the University of Pisa, and his figure remained associated with the place for ever, to the point that the airport now bears his name. With his studies of motion, falling bodies and the pendulum and, above all, his astronomical observations with the telescope, Galileo changed for ever the way humanity understands the universe.
Over the following centuries, Pisa was a quiet, prestigious university city of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which in the 18th century passed to the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. Although it was no longer a power, it kept its cultural prestige and its monumental beauty, awaiting a fate that in the 20th century would make it one of the most visited cities in the world.
In the modern era, Pisa joined the Kingdom of Italy with the country's unification (1861) and remained a provincial university city. Its most dramatic 20th-century chapter came with the Second World War: in 1944, during the Allied advance up Italy, Pisa suffered bombing that caused destruction in the city. The Piazza dei Miracoli did not come through unscathed: a fire set off by the fighting badly damaged the Camposanto Monumentale and its precious medieval frescoes, which had to be restored over decades. Fortunately, the great marble monuments — the cathedral, the baptistery and the tower — survived.
In 1987, Unesco recognised the universal value of the complex and inscribed Pisa's Piazza del Duomo on the World Heritage list, giving international recognition to the importance of this 'field of miracles' of medieval art.
But the great challenge at the end of the century was the tower. Its lean had gone on slowly increasing until it became dangerous, and in 1990 the authorities closed the bell tower to the public because of a real risk of collapse. So began one of the most famous and delicate engineering operations in history: an international team of experts worked for more than a decade, carefully removing soil from the side opposite the lean and using counterweights, to get the tower to straighten just enough to be stabilised without losing its characteristic tilt (which is, after all, what makes it unique). In 2001 the tower reopened to the public, secured, experts say, for at least two centuries. Today, paradoxically, the tower that threatened for eight hundred years to fall over is one of the most solidly cared-for and most visited monuments on the planet.