Camposanto
Camposanto Monumentale
The marble cloister of a cemetery on the north side of the square, said to stand on earth brought back from Golgotha.
Photo: Monica Rondoni, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Legend says that Archbishop Ubaldo Lanfranchi brought shiploads of earth from Golgotha back from the Crusades, and that the cemetery was laid out on it. The long marble cloister round the lawn was begun in 1278 by Giovanni di Simone, and Pisa’s great families buried their dead there in Roman sarcophagi.
Its walls were covered in frescoes, among them the Triumph of Death. In July 1944 a shell set the roof on fire, the melting lead ran down the walls and most of the paintings were ruined. Restorers took off what was left and found the artists’ drawings underneath, the sinopie, now in a museum of their own across the square. Visit it in 3D ›
More in Pisa
Leaning Tower of PisaThe cathedral’s bell tower, which started to lean before its third floor was finished and has leaned ever since, some four degrees today.
Duomo di PisaThe marble cathedral of 1064, paid for with the spoils of a raid on Palermo, the first great building of the Pisan Romanesque.
BaptisteryThe largest baptistery in Italy, round and domed, where a guard sings a few notes every half hour to let you hear its echo.
Santa Maria della SpinaA tiny Gothic church on the bank of the Arno, all pinnacles and statues, once home to a thorn from Christ’s crown.
Piazza dei CavalieriThe square of the Knights of Saint Stephen, with Vasari’s painted palace, now the Scuola Normale, and the tower where Count Ugolino starved.
Borgo StrettoPisa’s old shopping street under the arcades, from the Ponte di Mezzo north into the medieval town.
The LungarniThe streets along both banks of the Arno, lined with palazzi in ochre and pink, lit with thousands of candles every 16 June.
Ponte di MezzoThe middle bridge, where the city has crossed the Arno since Roman times, and where the north and the south of Pisa fight every June.
Logge di BanchiThe open loggia at the south end of the Ponte di Mezzo, built around 1605 for the silk and wool traders.
TuttomondoKeith Haring’s last big mural, painted in 1989 on the back wall of the convent of Sant’Antonio, near the station.
Gioco del PonteOn the last Saturday of June the north and the south of Pisa push a cart across the Ponte di Mezzo, after a parade in Renaissance costume.
CecinaA thin, golden flatbread of chickpea flour, water and olive oil, baked in a copper pan in a wood oven and eaten hot with pepper.