Pisa

Destination 》Europe 》Southern Europe 》Italy 》Pisa

Year Visited: 2016 – October

During Chinese National Day Holidays of 2016, I took some additional days off and caught a flight to Rome for two weeks long road trip across Italy, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City. The first stop was Pisa to visit The Leaning Tower of Pisa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of city of Pisa, known worldwide for its nearly four-degree lean, the result of an unstable foundation. The tower is situated behind the Pisa Cathedral and is the third-oldest structure in the city’s Cathedral Square.

Construction of the tower occurred in three stages over 199 years. The foundations of the tower were laid On 9 August 1173. The tower began to sink after construction had progressed to the second floor in 1178. This was due to a mere three-meter foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil, a design that was flawed from the beginning. Construction was subsequently halted for almost a century, as the Republic of Pisa was almost continually engaged in battles with Genoa, Lucca, and Florence.

In 1272, construction resumed, in an effort to compensate for the tilt, the engineers built upper floors with one side taller than the other. Because of this, the tower is curved. Construction was halted again in 1284 when the Pisans were defeated by the Genoans in the Battle of Meloria.

The seventh floor was completed in 1319. The bell-chamber was finally added in 1372.

Between 1589 and 1592, Galileo Galilei, who lived in Pisa at the time, is said to have dropped two cannonballs of different masses from the tower to demonstrate that their speed of descent was independent of their mass.

The tower and the neighboring cathedral, baptistery, and cemetery are included in the Piazza del Duomo UNESCO World Heritage Site, which was declared in 1987.

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After few hours at the Pisa’s Cathedral Square, we drove to Florence, a UNESCO World Heritage City.