Pisa

Foggy in Barga, so we headed for Pisa!  We almost expected a foggy quiet day there, but, amazingly, the fog cleared at Lucca, and we found Pisa thronging with people the same as usual!

We went up the tower this time for the first time.  What a strange sensation.  Ascending the staircase which spirals round between outer and inner walls, one climbs steeply on one side, and almost on an even keel on the other!  Wonderful view from the top.  The tower was started in the 12th century ...

"On January 5, 1172, Donna Berta di Bernardo, a widow and resident of the house of the Opera di Santa Maria, bequeathed sixty soldi (the original "s" in £sd) to the Opera Campanilis petrarum Sancte Marie. The sum was then used toward the purchase of a few stones which still form the base of the bell tower."

However, very soon it started leaning.  Towards the end of the 20th century, it was clear that the tower would collapse without remedial measures.  In the 1990s, an engineering company (British!) fitted a complex cable system which allowed them to decrease the lean to a safe angle, and to monitor and correct any future excess leaning.  It is clear, from the throngs of visitors on the Campo dei Miracoli at all times, that straightening up the tower completely - which could have been done - was not an option!

It was also our first visit to the duomo which houses a pulpit by the sculptor Giovanni Pisano created in 1305.  It is his masterpiece, and a major Renaissance treasure.  Amazingly, after a fire in 1599, the pulpit was dismantled, "lost" and only rediscovered three hundred years later, in 1926!

Lastly, we visited the Campo Santo, a walled cemetery dating from the 12th century.  Internally the walls were originally completely frescoed and the floor covered with carved marble tombs.  All this was put in peril by an incendiary bomb dropped by an allied plane in WW2 which burned the whole roof which collapsed and did irreparable damage.  Some frescoes do remain, however, and the tombs also have survived, though blackened and cracked in many places...

 Pisa's gems -  The Campo dei Miracoli - with the Baptistry nearest

The marble steps of the tower show the wear of centuries

The shadow of the tower.  The two white structures on either side of the shadow are the tensioning units which keep the angle of the tower stable

The duomo and baptistry seen from the tower

Detail on Pisano's pulpit - the journey to Bethlehem

One of the caryatids on the pulpit

Barbara in the Campo Santo 

Iron nails hold the woven cane which supports the plaster - a kind of lath and plaster.  The frescoes are then painted on the fresh plaster

Hard not to keep photographing the startling tower - note crowds in distance

An ornate letterbox on a villa on the way back to the station