Everyone comes to Pisa to prop up the tower in a photo. Few know that the tower, the cathedral and the baptistery were paid for with the spoils of a fleet that fought Genoa and Venice for the Mediterranean, until a battle and the river's mud wiped it off the map. Thirteen stops between the meadow a poet named, the baptistery that sings, the cathedral built on the sack of Palermo, Galileo's lamp, the tower that began to lean five years into construction, the experiment that may never have happened, the cemetery with earth from Jerusalem, the square of the knights who hunted pirates, the tower where Count Ugolino starved, the arcaded street, the bridge of the yearly battle, the church moved stone by stone and the Roman ships found beneath a railway station. Approximate audio duration: 23 minutes.
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Pisa: la torre torcida de una potencia naval que el mar abandonó
Todos vienen a Pisa a sostener la torre en una foto. Pocos saben que esa torre, la catedral y el baptisterio se pagaron con el botín de una flota que disputó el Mediterráneo a Génova y Venecia, hasta que una batalla y el barro del río la borraron del mapa. Trece paradas entre el prado que bautizó un poeta, el baptisterio que canta, la catedral levantada con el saqueo de Palermo, la lámpara de Galileo, la torre que se inclinó a los cinco años de obra, el experimento que quizás nunca existió, el cementerio con tierra de Jerusalén, la plaza de los caballeros que cazaban piratas, la torre donde murió de hambre el conde Ugolino, la calle de los soportales, el puente de la batalla anual, la iglesia que se mudó piedra por piedra y los barcos romanos que aparecieron bajo una estación de tren. Duración aproximada de audio: 23 minutos.
Tour stops
13 stops · ~23 min of audio · 3.27 km on foot (~50 min walking) · about 1 h 15 min in total
You have just come through the city wall and in front of you lies a huge green lawn. On it stand four white marble buildings: the round baptistery, the cathedral, the leaning tower and, on the left, the long wall of the cemetery.
The official name of this place is Piazza del Duomo. Piazza dei Miracoli, the square of miracles, was coined by a writer: Gabriele D'Annunzio, who in a 1910 novel spoke of the prato dei Miracoli, the meadow of miracles. The nickname stuck.
Notice something odd: the complex sits at the edge of town, right against the wall, not in the centre. The Pisans built it outsi…
2
The Singing Baptistery
You are in front of the Baptistery of St John. It is round, enormous, and the largest baptistery in Italy: its circumference is more than a hundred metres.
It was begun in 1152. Look near the base for the name of the architect, who signed his work: Diotisalvi. The lower arcades are Romanesque, like those of the cathedral. The upper ones, with their pinnacles and gables, are Gothic, because the work took more than two centuries.
In this city children were baptised here all together, on set dates in the year. That is why so much space was needed. Inside there is a large octagonal font in the c…
3
A Cathedral Paid for by the Sack of Palermo
You are facing the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta. Look at the four tiers of small arches, one above the other, like marble lace. This style, born here, is called Pisan Romanesque and was copied all over Tuscany and as far as Sardinia.
Work began in 1063. That same year the Pisan fleet attacked the harbour of Palermo, then in Muslim hands. According to the city's chronicles, the Pisans broke the chain closing the port and carried off ships laden with goods.
That plunder paid for the beginning of the cathedral. This is no legend: the façade itself says so. In the inscriptions on the lower p…
4
Galileo's Lamp
You are inside the cathedral. Five aisles, granite columns brought from afar, black and white stripes on the arches that recall mosques. Up in the apse is a mosaic Christ; the figure of St John beside him is by Cimabue, from 1302.
Find the marble pulpit, to the left of the crossing. It was made by Giovanni Pisano, Nicola's son, between 1302 and 1310. The figures twist, weep and cry out: Gothic sculpture with an almost modern force.
Now look up in the nave. A large bronze lamp hangs there. They call it Galileo's lamp.
The story goes that a nineteen-year-old Galileo, a student in Pisa, saw a …
5
A Tower That Tilted After Five Years
There it is. The cathedral's bell tower: fifty-six metres of marble, eight levels of arches. And crooked. It is not a trick of the photo: the top is displaced several metres from the base.
The tower was begun in August 1173. Around 1178, when it reached the third level, it started to lean. The ground beneath is soft, a mix of clay, sand and silt left by rivers. The foundations, barely three metres deep, were not enough.
Then work stopped for almost a century. Not because of the lean, but because of Pisa's wars with Genoa, Lucca and Florence. That pause saved it: the soil had time to settle u…
6
Galileo, the Weights and the Tower That Nearly Fell
You are on the side the tower leans towards. From here you can feel how much weight presses on this flank. Now for the most famous story told about it.
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564 and taught mathematics at its university from 1589 to 1592. It is said that he climbed this tower and dropped two balls of different weight to show that they hit the ground together, contrary to what Aristotle had taught.
The truth is less certain. Galileo never described that experiment in his own writings. It is told by Vincenzo Viviani, his last pupil, in a biography written many years later. Many h…
7
Earth from Jerusalem and a Shell in 1944
You are in front of the Camposanto, the monumental cemetery. From outside it looks like nothing but a long marble wall. Inside is a vast cloister of Gothic arches around a lawn.
It was begun in 1277 by Giovanni di Simone, the man who resumed work on the tower. But tradition says the ground was sacred before that: an archbishop of Pisa, Ubaldo Lanfranchi, is said to have shipped back earth from Golgotha, the hill of the Crucifixion, on his return from the Third Crusade.
People said bodies dissolved in that earth within days. It is a legend, but it reflects something real: Pisa had ships, rout…
8
The Knights Who Hunted Pirates
You are in Piazza dei Cavalieri. In the Middle Ages this was the political heart of the republic: here stood the government palaces, here met the Elders who ruled Pisa.
Look at the great palace whose façade is covered in grey and white designs. It is the Palazzo della Carovana. Those designs are sgraffito: one layer of plaster is scratched away to reveal the one beneath. Giorgio Vasari redesigned it from 1562.
By then Pisa was no longer free. Florence had conquered it in 1406. And in 1561 Duke Cosimo de' Medici founded the Order of Santo Stefano here, an order of knights with a specific miss…
9
Meloria and the Tower of Hunger
You are in front of the Palazzo dell'Orologio. Inside this building a medieval tower was absorbed, the tower of the Gualandi family. It is known as the Torre della Muda, or the Tower of Hunger.
To understand why, we must return to the sea. On 6 August 1284, off the islet of Meloria near the coast, Pisa's fleet clashed with Genoa's. It was a crushing defeat. Thousands of Pisans ended up as prisoners in Genoa for years.
Pisa never recovered its naval power. Genoa took control of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and Florence and Lucca seized the moment to press from the land side.
One of the Pisan commande…
10
The Street of Arcades
You are in Borgo Stretto, Pisa's most elegant shopping street. Look at the arcades: low arches covering the pavements, resting on stone columns of different sizes.
Beneath those arches, in the Middle Ages, there were workshops and stalls. Merchants back from the East sold cloth, spices and leather here. The city traded with Egypt, Constantinople and North Africa.
Look at the white façade of San Michele in Borgo, with its Gothic galleries. And search among the buildings for the remains of tower houses: tall, narrow walls with blocked-up openings. In the thirteenth century Pisa bristled with t…
11
The Bridge of the Battle
You are on the Ponte di Mezzo, the middle bridge, over the Arno. On both sides run the lungarni: avenues following the curve of the river, lined with pastel palaces.
This river was Pisa's reason for being. Ships came up the Arno from the sea, and the shipyards stood on its banks. The city had a port, a fleet and arsenals long before Florence, which lies upstream.
The bridge you see is not the original. In the summer of 1944 retreating German troops blew up the bridges of Pisa. This one was rebuilt in 1950, with a single arch.
Every year, on the last Saturday of June, the bridge becomes a ba…
12
The Church That Moved One Metre Up
You are in front of Santa Maria della Spina, on Lungarno Gambacorti. It is tiny and covered in pinnacles, statues and rose windows, like a jeweller's reliquary at the scale of a building.
It began in the thirteenth century as an oratory for sailors on the riverbank, and was enlarged from 1325. Its name comes from the relic it once held: a thorn said by tradition to come from Christ's crown.
The thorn is no longer here; it is kept in another church in the city, Santa Chiara. But the name remained.
Notice how close it is to the water. The Arno flooded often and damp threatened the foundations…
13
The Ships Under the Railway Station
You are in front of the Medici Arsenals, long brick sheds beside the Arno. The Medici built them in the sixteenth century to fit out and repair galleys, including those of the Knights of Santo Stefano.
Inside today is something unexpected: the Museum of the Ancient Ships of Pisa, opened in 2019. And the story of how those ships got here is the story of the whole city's fate.
In 1998, near Pisa San Rossore station, little more than a kilometre from the tower, ground was being dug for a railway building. The machines hit wood. It was the hull of a Roman ship.
Over the following years some thi…
How long does the "Pisa: the Leaning Tower of a Sea Power the Sea Abandoned" audio tour take?
It has about 23 minutes of audio across 13 stops and a 3.27 km walking route (~50 min on foot). Plan roughly 1 h 15 min in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "The Meadow of Miracles" (coordinates 43.7233, 10.3934). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open Pisa and pick "Pisa: the Leaning Tower of a Sea Power the Sea Abandoned". No account required to start.
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No wifi needed · Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian
