Duomo di Pisa
Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta
The marble cathedral of 1064, paid for with the spoils of a raid on Palermo, the first great building of the Pisan Romanesque.
Pisa was one of the great sea powers of the Mediterranean when it began its cathedral in 1064, with the treasure its fleet had taken from Palermo the year before. The architect Buscheto designed it as a cross of five naves, in white and grey marble with rows of arches, and Rainaldo lengthened it and added the façade in the 12th century. Pope Gelasius II consecrated it in 1118.
Inside are Giovanni Pisano’s carved pulpit of 1302 to 1310 and the bronze lamp that, the story goes, set the young Galileo thinking about the swing of a pendulum. The lamp there now was hung a few years after he would have watched it, but the story stuck. 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.
BaptisteryThe largest baptistery in Italy, round and domed, where a guard sings a few notes every half hour to let you hear its echo.
CamposantoThe marble cloister of a cemetery on the north side of the square, said to stand on earth brought back from Golgotha.
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.